The Golden Rule of Landscape Photography
There’s a golden rule of landscape photography, and you can follow every tip in this
chapter, but without strictly following this rule, you’ll never get the results the top pros
do. 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 that’s the rule. Okay, there’s
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? I’ll 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, that’s an exaggeration, but what Joe
said has always stuck with me. He said that today’s photo editors (at the big magazines)
feel so strongly about this that they won’t even consider looking at any of his, or any
other photographer’s, landscape work if it’s not shot at dawn or dusk. He also said that if
he takes them a shot and says, “Look, it wasn’t taken during those magic hours, but the
shot is amazing,” they’ll still refuse to even look at it. The point is, professional landscape
photographers shoot at those two times of day, and only those two times. If you want
pro results, those are the only times you’ll be shooting, too.