24 Hour Special: As the Sun Goes Down

Dusk is a great time to shoot reflections. The low light at sundown also allows you to use slow shutterspeeds for creative blurs. Exposure: f/8, 1/20sec, ISO 400 Time: 6.45pm. Photograph/Raj Lalwani

Dusk presents the photographer with an explosion of brilliant hues, while slowly reducing the colours of immediate surroundings to basic black.

Rightly called the ‘golden hour of photography’, dusk allows some breathtaking imagery. As the sun dips into the horizon, it produces a stunning skyscape that can produce beautiful images. For an hour before and after sunset, the skies display a vivid sequence of colours, converting everything else into silhouettes of basic shapes and forms.

Work Quickly at this Time of the Day
Up to the moment the sun touches the horizon, your shutterspeeds will be fast enough to hand-hold the camera for blur-free exposures or freezing subject motion in the foreground. After the sun sets, you will need to use a tripod as exposures get longer into the night. Shoot quickly. The colours and light changes quite radically from minute to minute.

The sand and sky were shot separately with different exposures, and then combined together. Exposure: (sand) f/11, 5sec, ISO 800; (sky) f/11, 1sec, ISO 800 Time: 7.30pm. Photograph/Rohit S Krishnan

Experiment with Movement
Since light levels drop around dusk, it is a good time to use movement to make your photographs more dynamic. You can keep your camera still to capture blurs, or pan your camera along with a moving object to turn the background into smooth streaks.

Dusk is a great time to mix natural and artificial light. Here, a slow shutterspeed helped capture the blur and the colours at the horizon. Exposure: f/7.1, 0.6sec, ISO 400 Time: 7pm. Photograph/Yarik Mission

Shoot Silhouettes
Silhouettes against the sun are effective when detail is not as important as shape and form. Look for subjects that have a distinct outline and recognisable or interesting shape. To render your subject as a silhouette, use evaluative metering to expose for the overall scene, or simply set your exposure to ensure that the background colours are vibrant and rich.

Automatic exposure bracketing helped capture the right colours in this sunset image. The fast shutterspeed also ensured that the moment was not missed despite making several exposures in succession. Exposure: f/11, 1/500sec, ISO 320 Time: 6pm. Photograph/Samira Sukhija-Pillai

Emphasise the Sun
Experiment with different ends of your zoom to portray the sun in different ways. Around sunset, the sun appears larger, especially when it is extremely close to the horizon. A telephoto lens can exaggerate this large size, while a wide focal length will make it seem much smaller, but will include a much larger part of the sky and its hues.

Continue Shooting After Sunset
After sunset, you will often find clouds that are still lit up by rays of sunlight from over the horizon. Seas and large bodies of water take on the hues of the sky. Some of the best twilight colours are available for up to an hour after the sun goes down.

Combine Natural and Artificial Light
Some of the best photographs are shot just before dark, when the street lights have been switched on, but a blue haze remains over the sky. Experiment with white balance, depending on whether you want to emphasise the natural light or the colour cast of artificial light sources.

A long exposure helped capture light trails, along with the clouds approaching from the left. Exposure: f/22, 30sec, ISO 400 Time: 6.15pm. Photograph/Ritesh Uttamchandani

The light, colours and activity at dusk make it the most interesting time to shoot fantastic pictures. Photography in the golden hours is the easiest way to capture pictures that make the viewer go ‘wow’.

To see the various ways you can shoot throughout the day, visit http://betterphotography.in/2012/01/13/photography-clock-24hrs-special/

This article originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Better Photography.