Sunset Reflection, Yachats, Oregon
Light. Photography is all about light. Not just intensity, but more importantly quality. Photography means painting with light. As photographers, not understanding light is like a painter who doesn’t understand paint! Unfortunately there are too many photographers without a basic understanding of their craft.
My absolute favorite time to photograph the landscape is the 30 minutes after sunset. Why? because of the quality of light that is prevalent at that time. The light is soft, warm and moody. There is a balance between light on the foreground and the light in the evening sky that is wonderful! There is still direction to the light, yet it is still very controllable. The light intensity falls off fast, so there is not a lot of working time, so you must be ready and not expect to get a lot of exposures in, but the ones that you do get are great ones. My goal when I go out to shoot is one image. I may set up my equipment and photograph the same scene multiple times until the light is completely gone. This way, I can see the progress of the light from sunset through the glow of afterlight. This image went from great to gone in less than five minutes. If I had not been ready, I would have missed it.
Some of my other favorite lighting conditions are overcast, especially for landscape photography, reflected light for both landscapes and portraits and open shade, particularly for portraits. Learning the characteristics of light is critical to your success as a photographer.
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