I am taking a lot of portraits etc. but I never experimented much with low light and I really want to, becasue I think night sceneries are some of the most beautiful.

However, all my tries were utter failures so far. I tried different methods of lighting up the scenes, but it never brings desired results.

For example, when I was trying to take a portrait in a relatively low lit hallway using a flash with softbox, the subject close to the camera was lit beautifully, but the rest of the hallway was really dark and I could not capture the beauty of it. It also looked bad with the reflections caused by the flash.

https://i.imgur.com/uczMyyX.jpg (ISO 200, 56mm, f/2.2 1/160sec)

Is there anything I could do differently using flash or I have to try completely different mthod?

Or for example when trying to capture buildings, architecture or groups of people during a night while still having things in focus, how do I go around doing that? I see people doing some beautiful night photography with everything in focus and no blur (at least not enough to be visible on social media). I though of getting a tripod + longer exposures, but then my subject could be blurry.

Therefore I don’t know what do I need to do and what kind of equipment I may need. I am using nikon z50 and sigma 1.4 56mm (mostly) but I also use kit lens 16-50mm when I can’t move far away from my subject.