Xpert Advice

Xpert Advice: Making the Most of the Golden Hour for Portraits

Chris Gampat
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08/15/2015
2 Mins read

Last Updated on 09/08/2016 by Chris Gampat

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The Golden Hour–it’s when so many photographers take to the streets to photograph landscapes and portraits. The Golden Hour, also known as sunrise or sunset, is a pretty long period of time where the sun’s rays bathe the Earth in golden and orange hues. These tend to look great with skin tones, but making the most of it can be tough to do.

First off, we recommend not front lighting a portrait subject. This will cause the person to squint and generally create unflattering shadows on their face and under the chin. Instead, try backlighting your subject. Backlighting is when the key or primary light source is behind your subject. The process that we’re using blows out lots of details in the highlights and gives you beautiful colors that compliment skin well. This is best done by using your Fujifilm X-series camera in spot metering mode. For some cameras, you’ll need to go into the menus while others like the X-T1 have a dedicated switch/dial. Then manually choose a focusing point.

If you don’t feel like backlighting a subject, try to find shadow coverage under an awning, tree, building, or somewhere else. This gives you much more even lighting to work with. Again, you’ll be using spot metering and manually choosing a focusing point. The Golden Hour light will still make the skin glow and look wonderful.

With your Fujifilm camera, we recommend working with the Classic Chrome or Astia film renderings. For many years, Astia was a favorite of studio and portrait photographers for its softer colors but just enough contrast to give the images some extra pop. If you’re shooting in RAW, you can always apply the camera profile to the image later on in post.

So what lenses should you use? The Fujifilm 56mm f1.2, 60mm f2.4 Macro and 90mm f2 lenses all give you the best results. Be sure to check out our guide to Fujifilm’s lenses for even more.

Xpert Advice is a monthly collaboration between the Phoblographer and Fujifilm designed to teach you photography tips and tricks in a bite-sized package.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.