How to take beautiful night photos without a tripod?

This picture was shot without a tripod. But even though it was shot with a shutter speed of almost 1 second, it’s not blurry.
 
Let’s be honest: No one wants to carry a big heavy tripod around, especially when traveling. But I do want to have some nice pictures at night as well.
 
The solution?
 

Improvise
 
You can usually find a wall, a rock, a trash can, a fence, or some other thing in to use instead of a tripod. Just set your camera on it and adjust the composition. You can stick some stuff under the front of the camera to tilt it up, if necessary. The right composition is a lot easier to adjust if the camera has live view. If not, you can just take a couple of pictures and look at them on the display and adjust as needed.
 
Now the camera is stable and won’t vibrate unless you touch it. But how do you take a picture without touching the camera? This is where the delay timer comes into play. All cameras have this, it is usually indicated by an icon that looks like a watch face. The standard time is usually 10 seconds, and some cameras allow you to set the duration yourself as well. Simply set the timer, let go of the camera and wait. It is of course even easier if you get a remote control like the Nikon ML-L3. This also makes it easier to be in the picture yourself.
 
Here are some other examples of night time shots with improvised support.