Golden Light Photography

Use the warm light of the “magic hours” to your advantage
By Dave Willis, Photography By David Stoecklein

The magic hours—the hours immediately after sunrise and just before sunset—are times of amazing light for photography. The time is brief, but the great thing is that twice a day, every day, there's a generous helping of breathtaking ambient light that's complemented by the dramatic backgrounds and mood of the rising and setting sun. Colors and hues are especially beautiful at these times and, in the evening, there's a particularly warm cast to the ambient light. Western photographer David Stoecklein is a master of corralling this particular light, and he uses it to its full potential in his portraiture.

"I think, first of all, it has to do with the overall feeling of warmth," says Stoecklein of the appeal of magic-hour light in images. "It's kind of a sensual thing. Colors evoke a particular mood or feeling in the viewer, so if you're looking at cold, blue things, you get sort of a cold, blue feeling. And when you're looking at warmer tones, you get more of—excuse the expression—a fuzzy feeling."


HOW TO SHOOT
Stoecklein is a big fan of photographing his subjects in the warm light at the end of the day. Rarely does he use anything but natural lighting, so he has become an expert at harnessing the resources available to him. His number-one advice is to constantly switch through a variety of angles and lighting conditions.

His favorite is backlighting, which he finds works exceptionally well in golden light. By positioning the sun behind a subject and backlighting him or her, you avoid a lot of the strong shadows of direct lighting. Maybe even more importantly, the unique characteristics of backlighting masks and softens imperfections in the faces of subjects. Another favorite is rim lighting, using the light from the side, which falls along the edges of a subject and highlights him or her. This adds an extra visual impact to the subject and heightens the sense of separation of the subject from the background, creating depth.

Sharpness is just as important to Stoecklein, so he almost always shoots at a shutter speed of 1⁄500 sec. He uses large apertures to achieve such a fast shutter speed, usually shooting around ƒ/3.5 to ƒ/4.0 during the evening magic hour. Most importantly, he brackets his exposures as much as possible.

"You have a really cool tool in your camera," he says. "It's bracketing. You can bracket all the way from ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/11 at 500, and by doing so, you may get eight different pictures, all of which are beautiful or usable. You may get a complete silhouette, a real edgy picture, or you can get where you can see all the way into their blue eyes, depending on what you want."

He often utilizes the natural reflective surfaces in the area, too. Sand, snow and lightly shaded rocks can provide enough bounced light to fill the areas that have too much shadow, like profiles that are obscured by the rim of a cowboy hat. When there isn't enough natural fill, he always has a foldable reflector nearby. Many reflectors come as a fairly neutral silver light bounce or with a gold material for a warmer touch. Reversible reflectors provide both. Usually, though, Stoecklein finds that the light is just perfect during the golden hour.

"I usually don't worry about filling," he says. "I have a little reflector, one of those fold-up reflectors, and it pops open and it fits inside my Pelican case. If I really need to open it up, I'll use something like that. But most of the time, in the conditions that I work in, there's a lot of reflective light coming off the ground, or coming off buildings or whatever, and in that case, you get beautiful light. So if you expose for their face, you don't really need that much fill."

GEARING UP
It's just as important, if not more so, for Stoecklein to be able to block light as it is for him to be able to bounce it on the subject and on the lens. He uses black flags and cards to block light as necessary, even occasionally asking an assistant to hold up a cowboy hat to stop direct light rays from hitting his lens. It's often easier to place himself in shadow, but no matter what, he always has his lens shade.

"I see so many photographers walking around with a 70-200mm with no lens shade," he laments. "Lens shades are so important, and that's why I really work with trying to block that ambient light with a flag or a tree-or a porch, where you get a giant shadow. Then you shoot out at your subject, who's out there in the light, and you can't believe what it does. It's a whole different world."

Stoecklein has been using a primarily digital workflow for more than three years, but he also uses traditional photographic tools when he feels the need. "I still like to have as much as I can of my image finished in the camera," he says. "You can still do it in one shot in the camera, and for me it's easier, because I'm not a great Photoshop person."

He's a big fan of Lee resin filters and finds that the coral filters, in particular, work well to enhance the golden light of the evening hour. Stoecklein also uses graduated neutral-density filters for tailoring exposure as the light changes in a scene. Sometimes, the background light is great, but the subject isn't in good light. In those cases, he pulls out his tried-and-true Lowel quartz lights for a warm fill that matches the mood of the evening glow.

ON THE MOVE
In order to be able to adapt to the quickly changing light of the setting sun, Stoecklein learns all the details that might influence the way he approaches a scene beforehand. He knows the exact time and position of the sunset. Light levels also are lower at this time of day, of course, which makes fast shutter speeds hard to achieve. This makes a tripod your best friend. Stoecklein's cameras are top-notch, so he's also able to bump his ISO up for faster exposures when he's going handheld.

White balance is an important consideration during this time of dramatic color shift, too. Many modern digital cameras have excellent automatic white balance, but the low-light levels make things a little tricky, so pay attention to resetting white balance as needed. For the best results, shoot in the RAW format so you can easily change white balance at a later time if you want.

Stoecklein finds that the easiest thing to control in golden-light portraiture is the subject, as people are easy to reposition when the light isn't. He'll often position subjects with the light behind them for his favored backlighting, and he'll keep shooting at different angles, because the subtlest movements can change the whole picture. The main thing, though, is that he likes to keep fluid, especially because the light in the golden hour is changing constantly.

"A lot of times, I have a sort of preconceived idea of what I'm going to do," he says, "and that's a great starting point, but then things just happen. When the light starts to get good, things happen that you never dreamed of. There are always little pieces of light dancing around, and you may see this little shadow that happens over here, or if you're working with people who walk a certain way, and the light strikes them in a certain way, you may try to push them or direct them back into those kinds of things. You really have to keep moving around to keep from getting stuck, and look for all those other great angles-the front light and the backlight, and all that kind of stuff."

RIDING INTO THE SUNSET
When asked if he has ever worried that his images will look too similar when he shoots so much in the same kind of golden light, Stoecklein laughs and says no. He says that even though the light is always good, it's never the same.

"For instance," he says, "I just did a shoot for Western Horseman magazine. I have this project I'm working on for them—cowboys moving some cattle from one pasture to another—and I was at my ranch, and I saw the moon come up. It was a full moon, and I went, oh, perfect! Tomorrow night is going to be the perfect night, because the moon is going to come up, and there's still going to be nice light. There's a point in the full-moon cycle when the moon comes up at exactly the same time as the sunset. I really wanted that blue, blue moon, and the cowboys in that beautiful, golden, ambient light. So then I got over there at about 7:30 p.m., and we picked the spot, and figured out where the moon would be coming up, and we started moving the cattle in that direction. And then we were able to get the moon coming up over the hills and the cattle. And it was just gorgeous."