Making the most of the golden hour: 5 tips for travel photographers

As a professional landscape photographer and a travel enthusiast, there’s something that I always keep in mind when I travel. The golden hour, with its soft and warm light, offers a unique opportunity for travel photographers to capture stunning landscapes. This is why I plan my trip around this period that, just around sunrise and sunset, can add a magical touch to every shot. Especially if I have a limited time at my disposal in a specific location, I want to capture it with the best light possible. Here are five tips to help you fully harness the beauty and potential of the golden hour.

1. Scout and plan your location

The key to making the most of the golden hour is preparation. To ensure you’re in the right place at the right time, make use of powerful tools such as PhotoPills or The Photographer’s Ephemeris to track the sun’s position and precisely determine when the golden hour will occur at your location.

Additionally, I love to use Google Earth’s 3D view when scouting locations, especially for drone photography. You can simulate the drone’s height to find the best angles and compositions.

Additionally, don’t forget to explore Instagram and LocationScout apps to discover hidden gems and see what other photographers have already captured in your chosen location.

Finally, consider how tides can enhance your photography. Take Walakiri Beach in Sumba, Indonesia as an example. This location dramatically changes with the ocean tide. To get the best photographs, monitor the tide level and synchronize it with the golden hour. At Walakiri Beach, the optimal time for photography is during a moderate low tide, which allows for capturing stunning reflections. During my last visit, there was just one day in the week where the tide and golden hour perfectly aligned!

2. Choosing the right lens for landscapes

A wide-angle lens is ideal for capturing the expansive beauty of landscapes during the golden hour. I personally find the 15mm range to be the most versatile for landscape photography. It allows for a comprehensive composition that includes a foreground, middleground, and background, creating a sense of depth and dimension. This lens range is also great for incorporating leading lines into your composition, drawing the viewer’s eye into the scene.

However, relying solely on a wide-angle lens can be restrictive when traveling. That’s why my go-to second lens is the Tamron 28-200 f2.8-5.6. This lens is lightweight, offers high-quality results, especially when used at an aperture of up to f11 (beyond which sharpness may decrease), and its versatile zoom range makes it suitable for a wide variety of subjects.

3. Composition

Composition is key in photography, and using layers effectively can really make your photos stand out, especially during the golden hour. Remember, the right lens can make all the difference. From our previous discussion, you know that the 15mm lens is my ideal choice for this. It allows you to capture both the foreground and background in detail, adding depth to your shots.

In this captivating image that I captured in Iceland last summer, the composition showcases how the foreground, middleground, and background can be seamlessly interconnected to create a visually striking photograph.

The journey begins with the foreground: here, the smooth rocks anchor the scene, drawing the viewer’s gaze. Then, the eyes are led by the natural curve of the shoreline—a leading line—into the middleground, which serves as a bridge between the immediate rocks and the distant majesty of the cliffs in the background. These towering formations rise dramatically against the horizon, providing a powerful focal point and concluding the visual narrative of the photograph.

Each layer, distinct in its own right, contributes to a sense of depth and dimension that is further enhanced by the subtle interplay of light and shadow cast by the golden hour. This image is a testament to the importance of thoughtful composition in landscape photography, ensuring that each element, from front to back, is in harmony and tells a part of the story of the place.

4. Mastering exposure techniques

Getting your exposure just right during the golden hour is all about understanding exposure. It’s a balancing act between the light and dark parts of your picture.

With the cameras we have now, it’s a lot simpler than old reflex cameras. Modern sensors have a very wide dynamic range, and most of the time, you don’t need to bracket different shots and mix them together later. I find that almost all my pictures turn out fine without doing that. Just dial back the exposure to underexpose your shot (always avoid burning the highlights, like the puffy clouds up in the sky.) and you’re good to go! More on this in the next point, where we will fix this in post-processing.

I also love using ND filters, which are a big part of my style, all for that silky water effect and moving clouds. I mostly use 6 and 10 stops, and the effect is incredible. Look how this shot changes between a 1/60 sec shot, and a 30 sec where a 10-stop filter is used.

5. The art of color grading

The warm glow of the golden hour gives you a special range of colors to play with, and with a bit of color grading after you’ve taken your photos, you can really make those colors pop. Tinkering with the temperature and tint controls can bring out the best in those warm golden hour hues or draw attention to the more subtle colors in the light. This can change the whole vibe of your picture.

I have a soft spot for pink skies—they just make any sunset unforgettable for me. When I get those colors in my shots, I can’t help but bring them out more in editing. And when the golden hour light is just right, editing feels like a breeze. I usually start by adjusting the exposure of my RAW files in Luminar Neo, brightening up the shadows, toning down the highlights, and playing with vibrance and white balance. The Pro Contrast tool is often my final touch. Sometimes, I’ll also go into the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) settings to tweak the colors until they’re just how I like them.

Conclusion

For travel photographers, the golden hour is like a magical spell, turning everyday scenes into amazing memories. To make the most of this time, it’s all about being in the right place, picking out the best equipment, using the right camera settings, playing with colors in editing, and using what nature gives you to add depth to your shots. Keep these pointers in mind on your next photo trip, and you’ll find that the golden hour isn’t just a time of day—it’s your chance to freeze those brief moments of beauty into images that last forever.