Wake up early for your photography sessions
‘Hey, it’s too damn early. Gosh, waking up at 4 am for a pre-wedding/engagement shoot? You’ve got to be kidding me. I need my sleep.’
Photography is all about light. And what’s better than normal light? Golden hour light. The golden hours in Singapore, from experience, typically is around 6.30 am - 7.30 am depending on the location for sunrise, and around 6 pm-7 pm for sunsets. What’s the golden hour?
Say hi to YJ and Manoj
Wikipedia to the rescue - “In photography, the golden hour is the period of daytime shortly after sunrise or before sunset, during which daylight is redder and softer than when the Sun is higher in the sky. The period of time right before sunrise and shortly after sunset is called the "magic hour," especially by cinematographers.”
In common speak, it is basically when the light is the nicest for photos. Simple enough? lol
As you can see from this shot, it gives the subject a pleasing light that fills her arm
Another shot of the pleasing light on arms
During golden hours, the sunlight isn’t that strong yet to kill your skin cells, especially in hot and humid Singapore. You will not get a sun-tan out of it, don’t worry. It generally gives photographs a warm, pleasant look to whatever the subject could be doing. Even monkey faces. It also gives you a rim/hair light - which illuminates the subject away from the background. Perfect.
Some of the safer shots that I usually do when the golden light is upon us are walking shots and forehead to forehead shots. Will never go wrong with those. The thing about the golden hour is that it’s not really within an hour. Sometimes it just disappears as fast as it comes. I’ll quickly do the mandatory shots that I need to do before I have the couple try out something different.
My number one go-to shot during golden hour
Back to the waking up early topic, we also have to deal on if it was raining (yep - not every day’s a “Sun”day) or it’s just extremely cloudy that day. The good news is that you can save your make-up for later in the day. It could even be a sunset photography session! If we had started the pre-wed session in the afternoon, and it rains, most probably you’ll have to find a sheltered location to shoot at or worse, postpone the shoot. Yep, there goes the make-up money.
So, choose well my friends when it comes to deciding what time you’ll want to have your photography session. I think it’s worth waking up just a little earlier on the day of your pre-wedding/engagement shoot days. Heck, even for family photography.
Agree/Disagree with me? Feel free to leave your comments down below!
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Couple featured - Yi Jia and Manoj
Shot on Fujifilm X-T3