How to take pictures at night? Nikon D5100?

This is going to be such a stupid question but I don't know how to. Like when I click the button to take a photo it doesn't do it because it's too dark, but obviously it's light enough outside because I can see things. I want to take pictures of some building which are lit up etc.

I'm new with this camera so sorry for this question, I have an 18-55mm Nikon lens and a 55-200mm VR lens,

I read that I need to manual focus it, but what else? Or is that all? I don't know lol. Any tips would be great!

Shutter times will be slow or ISO high in low light shots. Holding the camera steady whilst the shutter is open is the problem with the slow shutter speed, easily sorted by using a tripod, noise in the image is the problem with high ISO.

Use Aperture Priority Mode (A or Av), it's unlikely that the shutter speed will be slower than the 30 second maximum your camera allows. Set ISO low and a mid Aperture, say f5.6, half press the shutter and the camera will tell you what the shutter speed needs to be for a decent exposure. 90% of my images are shot in Aperture Priority.

If the shutter speed is too slow you can either/or open the Aperture and let more light into the shot (lower f number) or raise the ISO and accept more noise, better to have more noise that can be reduced in post processing (at the expense of detail) than blur which can't. Or use a tripod.

To give you some idea what your up against, this was shot on my Pentax Q of a relatively brightly lit Theatre, the Aperture was a very wide f1.9, the ISO was 800 and it still needed a fairly slow 1/5th of a second to get the exposure.

Blur was prevented by having the camera on a tripod and using an IR remote to trip the camera, all so that the camera didn't move and was solid. Even the slightest movement will take the edge off the sharpness. But you can still see the blur of the man walking through the picture. So tripods stop camera blur caused by movement, they don't stop subject blur.

High ISO, slow shutterspeed. As wide of a f/stop as you can get. Simple as that.