Kevin Thom - Hamilton, Toronto, Ontario Photographer

As you might have guessed from my recent posts, Laura Hollick and I were in NYC last week. We decided to take advantage of this situation to shoot some photos and video in that most iconic of Manhattan locations, Times Square. As a photographer, the challenge was going to be to be able to capture the energy and bright lights of Times Square, while at the same time featuring Laura in a way that made her stand out.

We brought in hair and makeup artist Tim Wilkins to help prepare Laura for the shoot. He did a great job creating a subtle, shimmering and almost elfish look to integrate her silver wig and silver leaf dress.

Once Tim was done with the hair and makeup, Laura and I hopped in cab and headed midtown and into the madness. Anyone who’s been there knows that it’s a total zoo at all hours of day and night. We quickly scouted the area and staked out some sidewalk for our shoot.

I wanted to show the very famous billboards and neon in the background, but allow a close crop that would put the focus on Laura. Shooting from a low angle allowed this to happen. I chose a low shutter speed (1/30) to slightly blur the action around her, and a wide angle lens (24mm) to create some slightly supernatural drama. The wide aperture of f/2.8 created the shallow-ish depth of field effect to separate her from the background as much as possible, but because the lens is wide, the background is still distinguishable. As you might know, the wider your lens, the harder it is to get really shallow depth of field. That was fine though, since I wanted to keep Times Square recognizable as our setting.

The general lighting of the scene was amply provided by the bright billboards all around, and I set them to be slightly over-exposed. I didn’t want the contents of the signs to be too distracting. Over-exposing them slightly allowed them to appear mostly white, with some minor details in them that weren’t terribly distinguishable. All of this meant that Laura was in silhouette, so I added a fill light to make her pop. I set up my trusty little Vivitar 283 flash up high on a light stand and put a diffusing lens in front of it to soften it a bit. With such bright backlighting and no modeling light to preview the foreground, it was like shooting in the dark. I could only see her dark form against the bright background in the viewfinder. I trusted my camera’s autofocus to keep Laura in focus, and just posed her based on her silhouetted shape.

We shot for about half an hour. I didn’t think that our little photo shoot would create even the tiniest stir amidst all of the madness of Times Square, but I was wrong. We amassed a pretty-good sized audience, who mostly stood behind me. Often, people wanted to pose with photos with Laura and ask us questions.

It was a little distracting, but also fun to think that we added something to the experience of a few New York City visitors. When we finished shooting, I was surprised by a loud round of applause that broke out behind us! It was quite a night. Here’s the final image we selected from the shoot.

Here’s another image I shot after I was sure we’d gotten what we’d intended to shoot. I experimented by putting on a super-wide lens (12mm) and moved the camera during the long exposure. I still used the flash to sort of freeze a portion of the action. I like the vibrant, semi-abstract feel of this one.

We also shot some video to promote Laura’s Soul Art® Certification program.

If you’re interested, read more about the Soul Art® Certification program.

I had a shoot with Shan the other day at one of Hamilton’s many waterfalls. Shan wanted to have photos of himself doing yoga at Albion Falls. Albion Falls is a great place to shoot because it’s big and has plenty of dramatic platforms at different levels. We had beautiful weather for the shoot. It was warm, and the sun ducked in and out from behind the occasional cloud to provide a variety of interesting lighting conditions. We hiked down the side of the escarpment to reach the bottom of the waterfall’s bowl. Then, Shan climbed up to the various terraces of the falls to do yoga poses while I shot from on top of some big rocks below. The rushing sound of the water and peaceful surroundings made it a very pleasant and easy shoot. What a pleasure it is to shoot photos of people doing what they are passionate about.

Technically, the shoot was pretty simple. I shot in aperture priority mode so I could control the depth of field. I would decrease the aperture for some of the shots to lengthen the shutter speed, giving a little more blur to the fast-moving water. A stabilized lens helps in this situation so you can shoot hand-held at long focal lengths without worrying about camera shake. Shooting at the right time of day really helps. We were there in the late afternoon, when the sun was still high enough to get over the lip of the waterfall and into our shooting area, but still low enough to provide a nice rim light on Shan, and a soft glow to the water droplets. It wasn’t quite golden hour, but still late enough for the atmosphere to filter out those ugly UV rays.

There’s a secret that most photographers know, and that you should know too if you want to start taking great photos. It’s the secret of “The Golden Hour.”

What is the Golden Hour?

Put simply, it’s that time of day when everything just looks great. During the Golden Hour, you can do no wrong with a camera. People, places and things all look beautiful at this time. Waiting until the Golden Hour can make the difference between a bland photo and a spectacular photo.

When does the Golden Hour occur?

The Golden Hour is not necessarily an hour long. It depends on a lot of things, including where in the world you are, and what time of year it is. It usually begins about an hour or two so before sunset, and lasts until the sun meets the horizon. The sky must be clear or mostly clear for you to experience the Golden Hour. If the sky is cloudy or overcast, you won’t see a Golden Hour. Around here (Southern Ontario, Canada), the Golden Hour is longest and most beautiful in the summer months, from about June until September. After that, it becomes shorter and less effective until the winter months, when we hardly get one at all! So, if you’re living in a similar latitude, take as much advantage of the Golden Hour as you can during the summer. If you’re lucky enough to live near the equator, you will get decent Golden Hour light all year round. If you live in the Arctic or Antarctic, well, you’re going to have to find another way to make your photos great.

Why is the Golden Hour such a great time to shoot?

During mid-day, the sun’s rays penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere perpendicularly, and all of the light gets through. The result is a very harsh form of light that casts sharp and unflattering shadows. Think on-camera flash on a massive scale. Yuck. As the sun descends towards the horizon, its light cuts through the atmosphere at a much flatter angle. This makes the atmosphere work like a giant prism that filters out the blue and ultra-violet end of the spectrum. Cameras hate ultra-violet light, which is why we often put UV filters in front of our lenses. And, because blue has been filtered out, the remaining light takes on a warm and orange glow, reminiscent of romance, adventure, and generally exciting times!

How do I best take advantage of the Golden Hour?

If you’re just making snapshots, the Golden Hour is going to do most of the hard work for you. The light is just better at this time of day, so your photos will look better.

If you want to plan your shot a little more, position yourself so that the sun is coming from behind your subject, towards you. This “backlights” your subject and can produce some really nice rim-lighting effects and interesting shadows. Add to this a couple of human factors–your subject will feel more comfortable not squinting into the sun, and also will enjoy the warmth on their back–and you’re already a long way towards creating emotionally charged portraits. You may have to adjust your camera a bit to compensate for all the extra light it sees by looking into the sun. If you’re using your camera in an automatic or semi-automatic (aperture or shutter-priority modes) look for an EV+/- adjustment, and dial it up to +1 or +2 to ensure that you get some detail in the foreground of your image. If you’re shooting manually, you can just decrease your shutter speed by a couple of stops to get the same effect. Pros will quite often use a reflector or a bit of fill light from an off-camera strobe to gently light the front of the subject.

You can also underexpose your Golden Hour shots, to really pull out the colors of the sunset sky and create dramatic silhouettes of your subjects. Use that same EV+/- adjustment to set a -1 or -2 exposure value. Similarly, you can raise your shutter speed by a couple of stops. The bonus of this is that you can freeze whatever action is happening in front of that golden sunset!

The Eiffel Tower photo above was a bit of a cheat. I actually took that one quite early in the morning, at the “other” Golden Hour. It begins just after sunrise, and goes for an hour or so. It’s quite a bit more difficult to use, though, since you have to get up pretty early to catch it. I left my hotel at 5am to get to that spot in time to take that photo. However, it was the only time I could be assured that the world’s most famous tower would be deserted!

I hope that what you’ll take away from this post is that when you shoot is just as important as what you shoot. Getting consistently great photos takes commitment, skill and discipline, but shooting during the Golden Hour can make the process a whole lot easier. Have fun out there, chasing the gold.