Lessons Learned chasing golden hour gorgeousness

PET Photography | Te Puru Beach, Thames Coast, Coromandel Peninsula | Brigette, Caera, Kohi & Ruby

EVERY photographer worth their weight knows that the generally accepted perfect times to take photo’s to flatter your subjects are: Blue Hour and Golden Hour. That first glorious hour, as the sun starts to defrost the world from the night before and the sparrows start their morning chorus.

And conversely, as the sun says goodnight and heads below the horizon, the glow from that last hour can make anyone look like Tinkerbell just pixie dusted them and they are filled with All. The. Magic.

So, being the mid-level photographer that I am, trying to “learn all the rules so you can break them” - I headed out recently for my very first Beach Golden Hour shoot - armed with the most delicious Canon 5DmkIV that has ISO settings almost as high as the moon - hoping for an awe inspiring sunset (as the weather had been overcast for the day).

So I had my sights set pretty high (almost as high as my ISO! ;) ).

Red Border Collie walking along Te Puru beach in the Coromandel at sunset — Ruby under the rising waxing moon.

lesson 1: beware of sticks

The shoot went pretty well, with the exception of being thonked in the eye by the lovely Kohi who picked up an L shaped stick and thwacked me with it as he turned to run off after I’d taken a few shots of him. He obediently put down the stick at his Mum’s command so I could take said photo’s, but was eager to continue where he left off as soon as the shot was over.

As the good photographer that I am, my first thought was - thank goodness it was only me and not the camera!! lmao

So, lesson one: watch out for rogue sticks. This primarily applies to dealing with tiny humans and animals. But is probably a good random life lesson also…

Gorgeous Border Collie at Te Puru beach on the Coromandel holding a stick in his mouth — Evidence one to be admitted: Kohi with The Offending Stick.

Lesson 2: orange is not your friend

Just like a bad self tanner, the sun (when paired with moody clouds as part of a gorgeous sunset) can produce an unwanted orange tint - not just on the skin, but on the whole image if that’s not what you’re after.

AND when dealing with a red Border Collie, the orange can really overpower the colours in it’s fur. The problem being, when you bring down the saturation in your editing in Lightroom, it can desaturate the gorgeous red/orange that they are.

Now you can fix this in two ways - one, as mentioned, you can desaturate the image and pull the “temperature” slider slightly more towards the blue. This will help pull the orange out of the image as a whole. You could technically also go down to the orange colour slider and reduce the saturation either over the whole image or mask it out and just alter that one subject.

But, the second (and preferable option), is to get it right in camera. Where possible, you should always aim to get things as close to perfect SOOC*, rather than relying on post production.

*SOOC is a photography term for “Straight Out Of Camera”.

Obviously, I didn’t do this - so it did mean a lot more editing.

Brigette, Keira, Kohi and Ruby 2023 (1 of 1)-2.jpg

Brigette, Keira, Kohi and Ruby 2023 (89 of 122).jpg

Now, I need to make a disclaimer here: If you WANT the orange glow, that’s a whole other story. But for now, I’m talking about if you don’t want the really burnt orange look that comes from having an intense orange sunset - not just your average sunset glow.

I suspect that the best option would be to add more blue to the in camera image to help neutralise it a little - but since I’m still experimenting with this, I’m not going to give a specific answer. Once I figure it out though - I’ll include that blog post or YouTube episode here. (So, watch this space. lol)

Even though the image turned out ok - I would have prefered to not use the desaturation slider as much as I did.

lesson 3: be mindful of your background

So, I already knew this lesson, but I have a great example of why this is SUPER important.

Keeping in mind, that sometimes when you’re dealing with things moving fast such as kids, animals, sports games - you’re not always going to have 100% control over this.

This example is of Kohi and the sign in the background that looked like window reflections…

The first few photo’s I took had the sign almost coming out of Kohi’s head - so by just moving slightly, it was moved to the side. It not only made the image look better without her having a sign out of her head, but also it gives me the option to take it out in post production if I wanted to.

lesson 4: balancing blowing out your images without losing all detail in the subject

Sometimes you have to balance blowing out parts of your image, with not completely losing your subject. So in this one, I was able to just mask the bottom half and bring up the exposure. But I still have that whole centre blown out. The problem is, because I was shooting pretty much directly into the sun - if I under exposed it much further - I was going to lose too much detail in the bottom half.

So often it’s about finding that sweet spot. #trialanderror

The more I photograph, I’m sure the more I will nail that exact sweet spot - but I’m pretty happy with these results - as is my awesome client who adores her pups. Which is really the ultimate goal.