Golden Hour Gone Wrong
Golden Hour Pitfalls
Written on the 21st of June, 2022
I got into the habit of taking portrait shots after each cinematic headshot photoshoot. After the headshots I took for my friend Talal AlDuaij, I started shooting him during golden hour. However, the location wasn't that great, and I tried to blur the background as much as possible. However, compositionally the trees on the horizon in the background were cutting right through his head and neck. Little did I know back then, however, I should have squatted down a little and made sure that the horizon line did not cut through his head or neck but instead below his shoulder or above his head.
The sky was cloudless that day. Clouds can add textures and tones to the image, which was not the case in my photos. The colours were not as vibrant as I had imagined. However, I used complementary colours to add a bit of interest to my images. I did that by increasing the saturation on the trees to make them greener and adding a bit of red hue to the model's skin tone. By doing that, I created a nice contrasty image. When I couldn't get the colours I wanted, I turned the photos into black and white images.
Most of the images I shot were medium-full shots. Yet, I cropped them in Adobe Lightroom to get various images with different compositions.
Golden hour can fade so quickly, so you must work fast. You need an excellent location for the golden hour to work, which was not the case with me. When it faded, I used a flash and continued shooting. However, the results I got were not to my taste.
The Gear I Used
