The Photography Tip of the Week #066

Posted by Philip in Photo Philosophy, Photo Technique, Podcast

No Rush Hour

066 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

One of the golden rules of outdoor photography is related to what photographers call the golden light.  There is an hour around sunrise and sunset when the sun produces “golden” light. This gives you a rather unique quality to the light that cannot be reproduced any other time of the day.  It starts about 20 minutes before sunrise and lasts about 40 minutes afterwords.  For sunset it starts about 40 minutes before sunset and lasts about 20 minutes afterwords.  There are some subtle differences between sunrise and sunset, but for all practical purposes the light and benefits of outdoor photography between these times of day are the same.  Here are a few added benefits of the golden hours of the day.

1) Softer light – The angle of the sun is low on the horizon.  The light has to travel through more atmosphere due to the curvature of the Earth.  This spreads the light out more than when the sun is high in the sky.  This diffuses the light over a wider area and creates soft light and smooth shadows.

2) Longer deeper shadows – The angle of the sun is so low that the shadows are very long.  This also has the added benefit of creating deeper shadows.  Because of this I often will even shoot exposure bracketed images just in case I need to make an HDR image.

3) Color shift – Since the light of the sun is going through a steeper curve of the atmosphere there is a prismatic effect that changes the wave length of the light, shifting the colors.  Depending on the altitude and the composition of the atmosphere (any added junk in the air) this color shift can be very pronounced.

And one more thing – Fewer people in the morning.  There are fewer people out in the evenings as well, but sunrise is great if you want to photograph without a lot of extras in your scene.

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