24 hours of Creative Light

A new year often means new resolutions. And what better resolution than to push yourself creatively through your photography?
Let’s be honest, sometimes we don’t know where to start, we lack inspiration or we need a little push to get our mojo back. Allow me to be that push! To be more precise, I’d like to encourage you to embrace natural light throughout the day, and add a creative twist to your photos. Let’s look for 24 Hours of Creative Light!

While a day is 24 hours, we’re roughly awake for 16 hours. During these hours, we tend to favor a certain time of the day to take photos, often by habit (who doesn’t love Golden Hour?) or by obligation (hello kiddos!). Now, follow me from dawn to dusk and night, for 16 hours of natural light. Let me show you some techniques that I like to use throughout the day. Let’s embrace the light and shadows!

6AM – Blue Hour and getting starbursts in camera

Blue Hour is one of my favorite times, when the sky is starting to be blue but the sun is still under the horizon. I especially like to get long exposures at that time, and/or get starbursts in camera, from the street lamps. This often gives a peaceful and romantic feeling.

7AM – Sunrise and Silhouettes

While I can also do this during Blue Hour, I tend to favor sunrise and its glorious and warm Golden Hour to get some silhouettes. It’s hard to go wrong with silhouettes at Golden Hour, but it is quite a lot of preparation, if one wants to get an impactful image.
Amongst other techniques showed in this article, I share what works and what doesn’t in my new course Creative Light and Shadows!

8AM – Neutral density filter and long exposure

I just love to get creative with long exposures, which is why you’ll often see me with my neutral density filter. This helps to create some smooth and ethereal waves, as we can see in the enlargement below.

9AM – Intentional Camera Movement (ICM)

Any hour of the day can call for some Intentional Camera Movement, although early in the morning or late in the evening allows me to shoot long enough without a neutral-density filter. This effect can also be created directly in Photoshop.

10AM – Reflections

During the day, I try to pay a special attention to reflections. While it’s easy to immediately think of water reflections, which is a perfect case, we tend to forget that we can play with a lot of other reflections too! Mirrors of any kind (mirrors from a car/truck work too!) or a windows, such as a window from a store front. This gives a « two images in one » feeling, which is particularly attractive and interesting for our eyes.

11AM – Pocket of Light

When the light starts to be harsh, it’s sometimes simpler to look for pockets of light, to add drama to our image.

12AM – Full sun and sun flares

Sometimes I also like to embrace the full sun, and make the most of a full sun day. It’s sometimes hard to with such drastic light. Playing with sun flares is also a bonus to get creative!

1PM – Bokeh in the shade

When the sun is really harsh, I like to get in the shade to get rid of the full sun challenges. This is also a great time to play with bokeh and how it adds layers and a soft feeling in our images.

2PM – Dappled Light (and panning)

Sometimes we aren’t lucky enough to have full shade coverage and we need to work with dappled light. In these cases, I like to embrace it, and use it to add textures to my photos. And why not add a little bit of panning along the way?

3PM – Low Key

When one wants to get creative (outside or inside!), using pockets of light for low key images is always a winner. Such a dramatic effect!

4PM – Capturing movement

When the sun starts to get low again, I like to play with longer exposure times, often without a tripod (or sometimes just using my photography bag on the ground to be steadier) and show some movement in my image.

5PM – Playing with long shadows

After silhouettes, playing with shadows is one of my favorite photography inspirations. I just love how we can strengthen the storytelling with shadows, and how we can guide the eyes of the person looking at our image.

6PM – Double Exposure

I talked about this « two images in one » feeling before, and of course this works too with double exposures. The start of the evening is a perfect time to capture images for double exposures, as we get larger areas of shade. You can practice double exposures directly in camera, or merge your images in Photoshop.

7PM – Golden Hour and Sunset

Now that we’ve been awake more than 12 hours, we get the second reward: the second Golden Hour of the day, with a prime sunset!

8PM – Blue Hour and moving your lens

And of course we also get a second Blue Hour, with another cool trick to play with: using Intentional Camera Movement (ICM), by moving only your zoom lens.

9PM – Lightpainting

During Blue Hour or night time, I especially like to play with Lightpainting and write some words. I tend to do this on vacations, to write the name of the specific place where I am taking the image.

Sometimes I also write/draw something that I can use later as an overlay.

10PM – Photographing fireworks

Here in Montreal we get fireworks in summer and in winter, so there is a lot to photograph! This needs a bit of coordination to get the moment of the explosions right on the camera sensor, but it’s so satisfying when you get a perfect image!

I hope this post inspired you! If you want to capture moments creatively, and dive into creative storytelling even further, you’re in the right place! Allow me to be your guide with my new downloadable course « Creative Light and Shadows ». Let’s make some magic together! 🙂

For more inspiration, follow Elodie on Instagram!