In many ways, sunset is the best time to shoot landscape photography. While dawn is the other golden hour for capturing scenic images, providing warmer light and softer shadows than midday, atmospheric factors often result in more saturated colors towards the end of the day. The other advantage of staying out later, rather than getting up early, is that the light is getting progressively better as the sun lowers in the sky and so the window for the best images is generally longer.
However, capturing golden hour shots at the coast comes with several unique challenges. The close proximity of the sun to the reflective surface of the ocean often results in easily blown highlights. To make matters worse, these clipped areas are difficult to balance due to the localized nature of the exposure difference – it’s not often possible to filter these areas using an ND grad filter, and HDR blending might require further local adjustment.
