Have you heard photographers talk about the "golden hours"? These are the brief periods of time around dawn and dusk. During these times, the light is often amazingly warm and directional. Compared to the rest of the day the light you encounter during these fringe times is pure magic. Experienced photographers know that the way to get stunning, breathtaking images is to take full advantage of these brief windows of opportunity. You'll find these photographers out in the field in the early morning, even before sunrise, and there in the late evening, when everyone else has gone to dinner. If you want to get great photos, be ready and waiting for the photo op to occur at the beginning and ending of each day.

MORNING = WARM COLORS, DRAMATIC SHADOWS
MIDDAY = BOLD COLORS, HARSH LIGHT, LACK OF SHADOWS
EVENING = WARM COLORS, DRAMATIC SHADOWS

Morning

If you think about it, waking up before first light increases your chances of getting great pictures by about 150 percent. If you can get ten good pictures in one evening, you can get twenty-five if you shoot both morning and evening. Why 150 instead of 100? In the morning, there are fewer people around, less traffic, and calmer winds and waters. Photograph a lake in the early morning, and you're more likely to capture the perfect glasslike reflections you're after.

If you find it practically impossible to get out early, it may help to analyze the reason. Photographers don't procrastinate because they're lazy; they fail to get out early because they haven't realized what they could be capturing. If you continually fail to get out of bed before sunrise, fine-tune your understanding of what you're trying to accomplish. Do you want to be a famous artist? Do you want to make your first photography sale? Do you want to make so many sales that you can actually quit your day job?

Also, don't be afraid to use whatever tricks you have at your disposaltricks that help you get going. You may discover that you need to be on a trip, traveling in an exotic location, to feel the sense of urgency to get out there creating images. Without any of the daily business to distract you, you might find it easier to dedicate a full morning to photography.

One fear people have of rising early is that, after they go through all the work to get out there early, the golden sunlight will fail to appear. It's true, this can happen. Some mornings turn out to be overcast and dull. If this is the case, you have three choices:

As long as the light is still bright (which is often the case even on overcast days), you can photograph things like animals or people. These subjects actually benefit from the soft, nondirectional light of an overcast sky.

You can photograph in a garage or kitchen studio (whether makeshift or professional).

You can go back to bed.