The paper reviews our recent achievements in developing a multimode scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) technique. The multimode SNOM apparatus allows us to simultaneously measure spatial variations of photoluminescence spectra in the illumination and illumination-collection modes, their transients and sample surface morphology. The potential of this technique has been demonstrated on a polar InGaN epitaxial layer and nonpolar InGaN/GaN quantum wells. SNOM measurements have allowed revealing a number of phenomena, such as the band potential fluctuations and their correlation to the surface morphology, spatial nonuniformity of the radiative and nonradiative lifetimes, as well as the extended band nature of localized states. The combination of different modes enabled measurements of the ambipolar carrier diffusion and its anisotropy.