Shoot Beautiful Photos During Golden Hour

Palaver Strings after their concert at The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage.

“Golden Hour” is a period of time, shortly after sunrise or before sunset, when the sun’s light is diffuse, soft, and rosy-cozy. Basically, if you’re like “Dang, the sky is beautiful right now!!” chances are that it’s golden hour.

Besides being generally a badass time to shoot photos, Golden Hour is a great time to “backlight” your shots, positioning your subject so that they are in between the sun and your camera.

When you backlight, chances are good that either your sky is going to be too bright (overexposed), or your subject is going to be too dark (underexposed). To fix this, I would recommend setting your exposure to capture the sky accurately (on a smartphone you do this by tapping the sky), and then lightening the shadows in an editing program like Apple Photo or Adobe Lightroom.

Don’t wait, go out and capture those yummy yellows, outrageous oranges, and ridiculous reds tonight!