What time of the day do you shoot?

The toughest time of the day for me is during the school year when I’m the one taking kids to school in the morning.

There’s nothing more frustrating than sitting in morning traffic as the sun creeps over the tree line to my left throwing shadows across the road in front of me. I watch, as best I can while traveling in morning drive-time traffic with kids in the car, knowing that by the time I return to that same spot after dropping of the kids that it will have changed. The light will be higher in the sky. The dew will have evaporated. The orange glow from sunlight traveling through the low atmosphere will cool off. The dark western skyline will become bright.

I will have missed the moment.

I know of a photographer whose friends and family think him to be a little eccentric. He’s up well before dawn each day, traveling to the nearest point of interest for early light photos. Even on vacation, traveling, Sunday, he adheres to the personal rule of getting up before the sun and watching as it moves higher in the sky.

He then retreats to home, or hotel, where during the mid-day, while most people are caught in worrying about what’s for lunch and who to have lunch with, he’s asleep, napping long enough to catch up on the missed sleep of early morning.

When everyone else is settling into completing their work day, he’s off again the watch as the day’s sun slips below the horizon and the last slashes of light travel across his path. His day is then nearly complete with only editing chores ahead.

What makes this story important is that this photographer makes his living shooting in the morning and the afternoon. Only several hours a day make his work week. How many people can say that watching the sun rise and fall are their daily work objectives. It certainly would be nice.

For the rest of us, those of us who shoot in the other hours of daylight, we must watch the light to make sure it helps tell the story of what we are seeing.

A kid running through a field of dandelion seed globes wouldn’t be nearly as effective it wasn’t backlit. Watch your light. See if it adds to the impact of your photo. The angle and intensity of the light source may be a distraction or confuse the viewer by highlighting distracting elements in the frame.

One of the main differences between a good photographer and someone who takes snapshots is an understanding of light and how critical it is to communicating the impact of an image. Learn to understand the revealing properties of light and the rest can become exceptionally easy. Forget about light and its importance and the rest has no meaning.