If you fancy switching up your blog photos and capturing some truly gorgeous light then there’s no time better to shoot than the “Golden Hour”. The first and last hour of sunlight is an incredible time to take photos thanks to the soft, warm sunlight glow and can give your snaps a really different look to the usual bright, crisp photos. Get your Golden Hour photos right and you can create a hazy glow and some incredible “bokeh” (light effects) but it can be tricky to get your snaps perfect so here are my Five Tips for Shooting outfit photos at Golden Hour.

ONE – PLAN YOUR SHOOT

If you want to shoot an outfit in the golden hour you need to be well organised and plan your timings. The Golden hour doesn’t last that long so you want to know exactly where your heading and what time to arrive to maximize your time. I prefer the last hour of sunshine only because I’m not a big early riser and of course throughout the year this one hour window will differ. At the moment (August) you want to arrive ready to shoot at around 7 or 7.30pm.

TWO – USE A WIDE APERTURE

To get the best chance of capturing light flares and bokehs (blurry balls of light in background) you want as wide an aperture as possible, so shoot with a lens like a 50mm or 45mm that has an aperture that can go down to 1.8. This means the aperture is as wide as possible and letting lots of light in so you’ll get lovely background blur and effects. All of these photos were shot using the Olympus Pen and 45mm lens

THREE – PLAY WITH HEIGHT

To create different qualities of light try playing around with height. Get your photographer to move around and experiment with the sun directly behind your head which creates a darker photo with some light flare around the edges. For a brighter effect and a much hazier photo play with shooting from down low, with the sun coming just past you and into the camera. Try lots of angles and you’ll see you get different effects.

FOUR – SET YOUR WHITE BALANCE

I like my photos quite cool so I keep my white balance on auto but to really embrace the warm orange tones of golden hour set your white balance to cloudy which will really enhance the colours. 

FIVE – FACE THE SUN

This is usually a massive no no, but in the golden hour as the sun is so low and warm you can actually stand with the sun hitting you directly. It will be very warm toned and not for everyone but its the one time you can actually shoot this way. Definitely worth a try as you might love the effect.