“There’s gold in them thar hills…”
Miss Saigon
The quality of light is crucial in creating a great photograph.
The word photography, after all, means ‘writing with light’, so it’s no surprise that a lot of photographers spend most of their time shooting during the ‘golden hour’ either just after sunrise or just before sunset.
In this article, I’ll show you a few of the benefits of this time of day and give you some ideas for the kinds of shots to take.
Warmth
The most obvious advantage of the golden hour is the ‘warmth’ of the light.
I use inverted commas here because the colour temperature of reddish light is actually lower than the colour temperature of blue light!
How can that be?
Well, it’s a convention to call it ‘warm’ because we associate the colour with things that are ‘red hot’.
In fact, there are plenty of other things that are hotter when they are blue rather than red.
Take Bunsen burners, for example: when you first light them with the air intake valve shut, the flame is yellow (and relatively ‘cold’), but when you open the valve, the flame turns blue (and becomes much hotter).
Anyway, we are where we are, so let’s continue talking about ‘warm’ light.
Most subjects look more appealing when lit by yellow, orange or red light, and it’s particularly effective with certain animals that already have a ‘golden’ coat, such as the big cats in Africa (see below).
He-Lion
Sun
Sunrise and sunset are obviously the best times to include the sun in your shots, partly because of the warm tones when it’s just above the horizon, partly because the low angle makes it easier to get it into the frame and also partly because it’s just so bright in the middle of the day that you’re likely to blind yourself just by looking through the viewfinder!
One neat trick is to use a very long lens in order to make the sun appear much bigger relative to. your subject.
I took this shot of a Cape buffalo with my 800mm lens, and the extra size of the sun balances it out nicely.
Horn of Africa
Silhouettes
Photographers spend a lot of time worrying about shadows in their images - and for good reason.
If you don’t shoot with the sun directly behind you, they can be a big distraction and can spoil what would otherwise be a beautiful image.
However, there comes a time - usually during the golden hour, funnily enough! - when you can make a virtue out of necessity: why not embrace the shadows and go all the way by shooting into the sun and turning your subject into a silhouette?
I spend a lot of time in Africa, and silhouette shots are easiest on a game drive when you can find a bare stretch of ground that rises gently up to the west - and obviously with a few animals on it!
That gives you the best chance of getting a clean silhouette by eliminating the background and cutting out any distractions such as trees and bushes - unless you want one or two in the shot.
The trick to doing this in Africa is to go to a private conservancy such as Kicheche in Kenya or Klein’s Camp in Tanzania.
National parks tend to kick everyone out at sunset (which is exactly when you want to be taking pictures!), but you can stay for as long as you like at a conservancy.
If you’re lucky, your guide might even let you get out of your vehicle and lie on the ground to get the lowest possible angle for the shot (as I did for when I took the photo at the top of this article).
You don’t even need to worry about your settings too much: just place your horizon low in the frame, and the brightness of the sky will ‘fool’ the camera into underexposing any animals in the foreground.
If you want the sun and/or clouds to be sharp, use a narrow aperture such as f/16.
Otherwise, you can shoot wide open as normal.
Just make sure you find the right place a good half an hour before sunset so that you have plenty of time to get set up for the perfect shot.
You can also do the same at sunrise, of course, although that might involve a very early start!
On my last trip to Kicheche with Paul Goldstein, we only had one decent sunrise, but it was a gloriously misty morning, so we went out 15 minutes early to give ourselves the best chance of seeing some game.
The mist obviously made that a bit tricky (!), but we eventually found a couple of Cape buffalo and clicked away to our hearts’ content.
This was one of my favourites…
Misty Morning
Rim lighting
Another approach is to try and get ‘rim lighting’, which is when you position the sun directly behind the animal in order to get a glowing, golden outline.
You’ll still get the silhouette, but the ‘rim’ of the animal will stand out from the background.
There are a couple of ways of doing this:
with a neutral exposure
with two or three stops of negative exposure compensation.
If you just ‘point and shoot’, so to speak, you’ll get the rim lighting and the silhouette, but you’ll also see the rest of the scene, including the clouds in the sky.
Gnu Horizon
If you underexpose (and play around with the shot in Lightroom, you’ll get what I call a ‘sunny silhouette’, which is just a golden outline against a black background.
And that’s it!
I hope these tips were helpful. Good luck making the most of the golden hour…
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