How to shoot golden hour landscape photography

Golden hour isn't always an hour, and the best light often turns up earlier or later than you'd expect. When you get there matters more than anything you set on the camera.

21 August 20268 minute read

Probably one of my favourite mornings. An early start to capture golden hour in snowdonia with the lonely tree.

The most useful thing you can do for golden hour has nothing to do with your camera. Get there earlier than you think you need to, and stay after the sun has gone. Plenty of disappointing sunrise and sunset sessions come down to arriving just as the light started and heading home just as it got good (usually whilst muttering that golden hour is overrated).

Golden hour landscape photography settings: a quick starting point

For a tripod landscape, these are good numbers to start from. There's nothing clever in the table, and that's on purpose. Set it, then spend your attention on what the light is doing, as that changes minute by minute whilst f/8 stays exactly where you put it.

Setting	Where to start
Aperture	Around f/8 to f/11
ISO	Base ISO where practical
Shutter speed	Whatever gives you the exposure you need
Exposure	Protect important bright cloud. The sun itself can clip
White balance	Around 5500K to 6500K as a preview starting point

Golden hour changes through the year

Golden hour isn't really an hour, and the exact length isn't worth memorising. What matters is the sun sitting low near the horizon, and in the UK it passes fastest around the spring and autumn equinoxes, while on a midwinter day the sun barely climbs out of it at all. The main thing to know is that the light changes quickly inside it, so the scene you set up for ten minutes ago can look completely different now.

Before sunrise, after sunset

Softer and cooler, with the shadows staying open. There's often more colour in the sky at this point than once the sun is properly up. It's also the part people miss at both ends of the day, as it happens either before the alarm goes off or after you've decided to go home.

Sun on the horizon

Long shadows, much stronger contrast, and the most dramatic light of the morning. It's also the hardest part to expose, as the difference in brightness between the sky and the land is at its biggest right when the colour is at its best. That's completely normal, so don't blame the camera!

The sun rising over the sea just beside the teeth of a large rusty gear wheel, with a small boat on the water framed inside the wheel and a rusted cable drum in the foreground. — Sunrise beside the gear wheel of an old hand-cranked crane, 1/8s at f/11 and ISO 125 at 16mm. With the sun right on the horizon, a strong shape in front of it like this stops the foreground turning into a dark block.

Sun slightly higher

Still warm, still directional, and much easier to work with than the other two. If the sunrise itself keeps getting the better of you, this is the phase to concentrate on (and it's the one you'll have already missed if you turned up at the published sunrise time).

If you only change one thing

When you're planning around a published sunrise or sunset time, arrive well before it. A good rule of thumb is to turn up roughly 45 minutes early and stay around 30 minutes after. That's a lot of standing about, and some of the walking will be in the dark, so bring a flask, a warm layer and a head torch!

A wooden mountain hut with a flag on a grassy slope, dark against an orange sunset sky, with pine trees to the right. — 1/250 at ISO 100, f/3.5 at 124mm. A mountain hut caught just as the sun was setting. Head off as soon as the sun touches the horizon and this is the light you miss.

Settings: keep them simple

Aperture

f/8 to f/11 for a typical landscape. Going to f/16 or f/22 for more depth of field costs you sharpness through diffraction, which softens the whole shot rather than just the corners, and sharpening only gets a little of it back afterwards. If you need more depth than f/11 gives you, think about where you put the focus, or stack two exposures, rather than stopping down further.

ISO

On a tripod, use base ISO wherever it's practical. It gives you the most room in the highlights and shadows, and a bright sunrise sky is exactly what you'll be pulling back later. All it costs you is a longer shutter speed, and you're on a tripod anyway.

Shutter speed

Let it fall wherever the exposure puts it. At base ISO on a tripod it'll often be slow enough to blur water or cloud, and that can end up being the best thing in the shot, so decide whether you want it. It's worth knowing which shutter speed gives which look in water before you're standing in front of some with the light going.

Cley windmill and the flint cottages around it lit warm by low evening sun, with reed beds in front and pink and blue cloud behind. — Last light at Cley, 1/6s at f/11 and ISO 50 on a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. That's the table above almost to the number, and at 1/6s a tripod is a must.

Exposure

Protect the highlights you care about, and be clear about which ones those are. The sun itself can clip, and chasing it will cost you the rest of the shot. Bright cloud around it is different, as once that texture has gone there's no getting it back, whatever the highlight slider promises. Use the highlight warning and the histogram rather than the preview on the back of the camera, which looks a lot brighter in the dark than the file really is.

Four things that often flatten it

Shooting straight into the sun with nothing in the foreground. Backlight needs a strong shape to work against, like a tree, a rock, a ridge, a building, or a friend who's agreed to stand very still. Without one, the bottom of the shot turns into a dark block under a bright sky.
Not moving sideways. Low light makes long, directional shadows, so a few steps to one side can completely change the foreground. It costs nothing, and it's easy to forget.
Only watching the sun. Turn around every so often. The best light is often landing on the landscape behind you whilst everyone else is pointed at the horizon.
Adding even more warmth later. Golden hour light is already warm, so go easy on the temperature slider or the whole thing turns orange very quickly.

A snow-dusted mountain peak lit from the side by low sun under orange cloud, with a stream winding through rocky ground in front. — 1/2000 at f/4, with low sun lighting one side of the mountain and leaving the rest in shadow. Light from the side like this is what brings out the texture in snow and rock, so it's worth checking what the sun is doing behind and beside you.

Filters

Polariser

Handy for cutting the glare on wet rock, leaves and water, and it does something you can't do afterwards. Go easy with it on a very wide lens with a low sun though. Strong polarisation across a wide sky leaves an uneven band of dark blue that's obvious on a big screen and very easy to miss on the back of the camera.

Graduated ND

Still useful in simple scenes, and a straight horizon over the sea is what it was designed for. Around an uneven mountain ridge it's much less useful, as the filter darkens the top of the hill along with the cloud. Raw files and exposure blending have taken over most of the rest of its work, so carry one if you like using it, not because a list said you needed one.

White balance

Auto white balance has one bad habit at this time of day. It sees a naturally warm scene, decides the warmth is a mistake, and cools it straight back out, cancelling the exact thing you got up early for. A fixed setting somewhere around 5500K to 6500K stops that. You can still change it later on a raw file, but setting it by hand means the back of the camera shows you something close to what you're seeing, whilst you've still got time to do something about it.

What if the light doesn't happen?

Then shoot something else (a bit of sulking is allowed, but keep it brief). Flat dawn light is great for woodland, waterfalls and close detail, which is most of what makes an autumn morning worth the alarm whether or not the sky does anything. Heavy cloud with a small gap near the horizon is also worth waiting on, as it can give you a very short burst of colour about ten minutes after you'd decided the morning was a write-off. Yet another reason to stay!

Give yourself one proper attempt

Pick a location you already know, so you're not working out the composition and the light at the same time. Get there early enough that you're not rushing, then stay through the whole change in light rather than chasing one moment of it, as the moment you were waiting for often isn't the best one of the morning. The Landscape Golden Hour Mission is a good place to see how other photographers handled the same sort of light (the settings sit next to each shot whenever someone has Shot Recipe on), and then to add your own.

Shoot itLandscape

Landscape Golden Hour

Low, warm light on a landscape. See how others handled it, then put one up.

The same light does something completely different to fur and feathers, so if that's more your thing, Wildlife Golden Hour is the long lens version. And if you can face getting up even earlier, blue hour is the underrated one, with an even shorter window.