Elevate your photography with sunlight quality
Mastering the exposure — in another word the quantity of light — is not everything. In fact, you are on your way to the perfect photo, you are just missing the quality of light.
Nowadays, any photographer can achieve a well-exposed photo, the camera will automate it for you. But the quality of light is achieved by planning and understanding the sunlight periods. This is your chance to step up from other photographers.
Unlike artificial light sources, natural sources such as the sunlight, can’t be controlled. The best friend and ally for all photographers is : time. Sunlight will have different directions, colors and intensity during the day, that’s why the photographer needs to be well prepared and acquire a hunter mentality.
Look at the massive light quality change in these three photos. Hope I convinced you to be more curious about this topic.
Sunlight Periods
First we need to know that the sunlight continues to reach us after the sunset, and start to illuminate way before the sunrise. In the morning, the sunlight start reaching us at -18° until it is visible at 0°.
The time between -18° and 0° is called the twilight period. Within this period, the sunlight illuminates, but the sun is not visible. That period is divided into 3 sections, each having 6°. We call the period between -18° and -12° : the astronomical twilight, between -12° and -6°: Nautical twilight and between -6° and 0°: the civil twilight. After the sunrise, between 0° and +6° it’s the sunrise period.
The golden period is between +6° and -4°, and the blue period is between -4° and -8°.
By the way, they are also named golden and blue hours, but it’s not really an hour. We can explore that in upcoming articles around the duration section.
My Own Timings
This is what courses and books will teach you. But I never really agreed with that.
Below, 6 photos that I took within the golden period. They are all different.
Different look, different preparations, different techniques, some need tripod, other ND filter. What I want to say is that this golden period is too wide, we need some kind of segregation.
I will share with you my own segmentation, it’s the result of 25 years photographing urban scenes.
Between +6° and 0°, it’s the Sunrise/sunset period. Within this period, there is a golden one, between +2° and 0°. Then, we have the civil between 0° and -6°, and within, we have the blue period between -4° and -8°.
When I prepare a shooting, I target one or more of these 4 periods. The planning, the techniques and materials will be different for each period.
To see them more clearly, let put them in a linear timeline :
Let see an example over time :
If we use the normal segregation, the civil, golden and sunrise photos, will all be within the golden period. That’s why, I prefer to segment them and have more control.
This photo sequence is just an example, because between each of them, there is a lot more to discover.
In the next article, we will explore a single scene over an entire day. At the end, you will be able to recognize all the transitions and create your own overtime photos.
Think Like a Photographer
Want to learn more? Here a lecture on sunlight periods :
