...As a landscape photographer, you can only shoot two times a day: (1) dawn. You can shoot about 15 to 30 minutes before sunrise, and then from 30 minutes to an hour (depending on how harsh the light becomes) afterward. The only other time you can shoot is: (2) dusk. You can shoot from 15 to 30 minutes before sunset, and up to 30 minutes afterward. Why only these two times? Because thats the rule. Okay, theres more to it than that. These are the only times of day when you get the soft, warm light and soft shadows that give professional quality lighting for landscapes. How stringent is this rule? Ill never forget the time I was doing a Q&A session for professional photographers. The other instructor was legendary National Geographic photographer Joe McNally. A man in the crowd asked Joe, Can you really only shoot at dawn and dusk? Joe quietly took his tripod and beat that man to death. Okay, thats an exaggeration, but what Joe said has always stuck with me.He said that todays photo editors (at the big magazines) feel so strongly about this that they wont even consider looking at any of his, or any other photographers, landscape work if its not shot at dawn or dusk..... -- SCOTT KELBY
Posted on: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 10:07:31 +0000