When I’m booking location sessions, you will typically receive two time options: one very early in the morning, the other mid afternoon-evening, depending on the time of the year.

Then there are days I get really excited and I’ll photograph people all day.

How does that work?

I promise it’s not all based on a whim.

The hour immediately following sunrise and immediately preceding sunset have the softest light. This is known as the golden hour. When light is directly overhead, it creates harsh shadows on faces, which is not pleasing, photographically speaking. There are ways to combat it (because I feel that is what you’re doing with midday sun) but it’s much easier to get prettier light during the golden hours. Here are some prime examples of gorgeous golden hour light.

But wait! What about the days I’ll shoot all day?

Those days are always cloudy days. The clouds are amazing and act like a natural soft box to the sun’s harsh light. It’s a very pretty diffused light. This is the same reason that during your session you’ll end up being placed in shade. Shade is our best friend during photo sessions. Just look at these photos I took on an overcast day.

 

So how do I make this work? Every few months, I look up sunrise and sunset times and write them in my planner and book your sessions based off of that information. However, weather happens. Rain. Snow. Ridiculous cold. Wind. When those sessions get rescheduled, I start looking for mostly cloudy days ahead. I want you to love your pictures, and a huge part of that is having nice, pretty, flattering light.

So when I offer you a 7 am session, it’s not because I’m a bit evil; trust me, I don’t particularly want to get up that early any more than you do! It’s because of the quality of the sunlight and wanting to maximize the quality of your images.