CHAPTER 17Golden hour

All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz 

In photography, the term "the golden hour" refers to a period of the day that photographers relish -- and exploit -- because of how its dramatic, splayed or patch lighting falls on various objects. The golden hour is usually an hour or so right before or after sunrise or sunset. 

Truth be told, I did little -- if none whatsoever -- shooting in the morning golden hour in Garfield Park. I worked many of those years, so I was either in the office or on the way there in the hour after sunrise. All my golden-hour of shooting was in the late afternoon near, at or after sunset.

The golden-hour picture in Garfield Park about which I am most pleased is the first image you see below. I couldn't asked for better conditions -- a purplish sky and "golden" reflection on the Conservatory windows, topped with natural sparkling rays emanating from the lampposts (I did not use a light-sparkling filter enhancement, which some photographers will use to get that effect). 

The photo was taken in the Sunken Garden as the sun was preparing to drop below park trees just a few minutes before it dropped below the horizon on Sept. 1, 2008.

The conditions I described above -- the sky color, golden reflection, sparkling lamppost lighting and even the remaining available light that enabled a viewer to appreciate detail of the garden -- were fleeting that night. But they came together at the right time for me; I was at a great right place at the right time. More "golden hour" photos in the park appear below. 

Please note that you can click on any photo in this post to view a larger and sharper version of it.  

Above is a ground-level picture I took of some blades of grass, using the brilliant golden-hour sky for background -- and for backlight to make this silhouette. It was taken April 6, 2011, in the grassy area west of the railroad tracks not far from Emmerich Manual High School. The shot below was taken the same evening from approximately the same vantage point only about 10 minutes later, at which time the sun was fully below the horizon.

Over the years, I've come across sundry trash items as I did my various shoots. Technically, the shot above of an empty beer can was not in Garfield Park, but it was very close to it. I came across it as I walked home from a park photography outing one evening. The can was situated close to a curb along Allen Avenue just south of Southern Avenue. I particularly like how the flare from the setting sun in the background introduced a secondary element to the composition.

On Aug. 12, 2006, the men in the four photos below played some pickup basketball on the asphalt court next to Burrello Family Center in the hour or so before sundown. I made a point to grab shots both with the sun behind me (first two images below) and as a backlight source for silhouettes (second two photos below). You can hopefully detect the dramatic natural lighting on the players in the first two images. In the second two, I just moved to a position that was facing the sun, using the backboard to prevent the sun from impairing my vision so I could compose, effecting the silhouettes that you see. 

 

 

It was nearing sundown when I took the above shot (which you'll also find in the arts center chapter), an example of patch natural lighting. 

I was motivated to photograph the scenes above and immediately below on April 6, 2011, by the openings in the clouds that allowed sunbeams to seep through. I haven't come across that situation very often. I was near the railroad tracks on the park's west fringe. Manual High School is in the center and right.

Near sundown two days later, on April 8, 2011, I noticed another batch of heavy cloud cover and returned to this spot with my camera to see what I might be able to get. This time, there was a slight opening for the setting sun to make a brief, partial appearance, which is how I got the photograph above.

The photos above, another example of patch lighting, and the first three below are from Aug. 12, 2006, at a point in the shoot that I was focusing on how the dramatic late evening sun was creating these shadows on trees along the asphalt path behind Burrello Family Center. I really liked the contrast in the shot above and immediately below. I recently processed the second image below through high-dynamic range software for two reasons. One was to illustrate how HDR can pull out detail in dark shaded areas, which was the case on the bottom portion of the tree trunk as captured in the original frame (in the single-frame version, this portion was close to black). But more important to me was to use HDR to help me mute an annoying solar glare in the original frame in the tree knot in the sunny portion just below the first middle branch. HDR muted the glare nicely. The third image below might best illustrate how the sun's selective, or patch, lighting will create special "looks" in the golden hour. 

Above: On Oct. 21, 2011, I returned to the sycamore trees and captured this at 6:23 p.m.

Above and below: Two golden-hour captures from Oct. 21, 2010. In the one below, taken at the fork in the road on Conservatory Drive, notice the random patches of sunlight. 

Above: On Oct. 21, 2011, a year to the day after the two photos above this one were taken, I made this example of splayed lighting during the golden hour (6:44 p.m. to be exact). I positioned myself to stand so the sun was mostly blocked by the trunk of the tree left of center. I liked how the splayed rays illuminate portions of the grass ... but most of all how they reflect off the recycling drop-off bin on the right. This was taken from the open meadow adjacent to the rear of Garfield Park Arts Center. 

Above: I was ecstatic about being able to catch the setting sun in this manner, right next to the trunk of what I came to call "The Tree" in Garfield Park in my latter years of living in Indianapolis. It's located in the park's southwest quadrant, not far from Southern Avenue. High-dynamic range (HDR) software enabled me to cull the detail you see in this image, which was taken at 7:55 p.m. on April 8, 2011. All of the single frames of this photo that I took were extremely dark and barely showed detail in any of the subjects. HDR gave me something to work with. 

Next up, Chapter 18: The Interurban shelter

Previously in the Garfield Park in Pictures series:

Introduction

Chapter 1: “America, We Remember”

Chapter 2: The Garfield Park Arts Center

Chapter 3: Bean Creek and Pleasant Run

Chapter 4: New Bean Creek pedestrian bridge

Chapter 5: Blake’s Garden

Chapter 6: Burrello Family Center and James Garfield statue

Chapter 7: Conservatory Crossing yuletide decorations

Chapter 8: Conservatory proper

Chapter 9: Conservatory permanent tropical plants and rainforest exhibit

Chapter 10: Garfield Park Farmers Market

Chapter 11: Fire Station 29

Chapter 12: Fireworks

Chapter 13: Four Seasons: Autumn

Chapter 14: Four Seasons: Spring

Chapter 15: Four Seasons: Summer

Chapter 16: Four Seasons: Winter

Putting down the camera at Myrtle Beach ...except for a couple sunsets

From Savannah, Lee Ann and I drove up to Myrtle Beach to meet some of her family to enjoy the beach and some rest and relaxation.

We had mostly decent weather; there was a day or two when it was on the chilly side, and one evening we spent an hour or so monitoring a local television channel to ascertain when vicious storms headed our way could turn out to be serious enough to seek protection from tornadoes. 

But the storms moved out before turning that dangerous. 

Almost all the pictures I took while in Myrtle Beach this time were with my iPhone, and they were family photos. Nothing I am going to bother with in blog posts. 

The exception are images you see in this post. Usually I go to Myrtle Beach expecting interesting sunrise pictures. Lee Ann coaxed me to find something interesting with the sunsets while I was there, so that's what the images in this post are about, all taken from the balcony of our rooms. Yes, I use the plural rooms; for the first two nights, we stayed on the second floor at one end of the hotel; we went up four floors and to the other side of the building for the remainder of our stay. 

Leading off the post is a photo looking southeast and was taken from the balcony on the higher-floor room. The sun is lowering behind us, so you see rich, late-afternoon dramatic colors and contrast here. I'll let the captions tell the story of the remaining images in the post. There is some interesting "looks," given the direction and time involved.

Above: This image was taken from the first room's balcony, which looks due east and was right after sundown.

The photo and above and the last two below were taken on a different night, about 15 minutes before the sun went down. They also were from the balcony of the sixth-floor room. The first one above also looks east, and you appreciate that dramatic late-afternoon lighting on the orange building facade. For the bottom two images, I turned to look toward the sun. The first below, a perspective shot, finds the sun curling around the left backside of the building, casting out what I thought was some cool flare rays. I then put my polarizing filter on the Tamron 28-300 f.3.5-6.3 lens (on my Canon 6D) and zoomed in to get the final image, a much clearer depiction of how the sun was dropping behind the building.  

Return to Myrtle Beach, Part IV: Clouds, light play at sundown

On our second trip to Myrtle Beach in April, I ran into some fortuitous lighting along the beach one afternoon. It gave me the dramatic contrast you see in the photo leading off the post and the first five images below this introductory text. 

And the clouds, I'd posit, present an interesting secondary element to these photos, alongside the waves and, in the last photo of the the series on dramatic lighting, the beach.  

I'd taken photographs of the Pier 14 restaurant and lounge and the adjacent pier at Myrtle Beach before, but I decided to make them, particularly the eatery, a stronger focal point of my photography on this visit. That's why you see them -- and/or portions of it -- in so many pictures after the series of dramatic lighting below. The high-vantage point shot of the pier was taken from the balcony of the place we stayed, a place we have stayed at for a few previous visits. I also used the balcony for the high-vantage shots of the sunset further down in the post. 

I used my iPhone 11 for all of the shots in this post, by the way. 

A silhouette of the Myrtle Beach downtown boardwalk area and Ferris wheel (above), a compositional subject that isn't new to me. But since I took this from the beach on the same visit as all the other images in this post, I decided to use this shot here as well. To compare, below are several other shots of the Ferris wheel as a focal point taken from the boardwalk, which got me out of the back lighting situation seen above. The shots below were taken not long after the one above.    

Back on the beach (above) for this sundown shot of the flags along the boardwalk. The cloud pattern also piqued my interest. 

Above and first four images below: Back on the boardwalk, I took a stab at some "street photography" type shots, succeeding in the classic sense only in the last two of the four below. I don't try street photography very often, but it can be rewarding at times.

Above: I might have been more pleased and better rewarded for this long-range "compression" composition of the hotels lining the beach as seen from the boardwalk if I'd have had my Canon 6D and one of my lenses with far-reaching focal range. But this gave me an idea how far I could push the iPhone in creating such compositions.  

Above and below: Shots of hotels along the beach. the one above looks northwest, so there is not quite as much dramatic backlighting as the one below, which was looking directly west.  

When I got back to the room, I still had the itch to play with the interesting clouds in some pictures, and decided to capture some of the downtown area as sunset approached. That's the story -- and the results -- behind the photos you see above and for the remainder of the post below. Some of these were shot through the glass doors on our balcony (hence the reflections), but most were taken on the balcony itself. 

Previously in this series: 

Part I: Downtown Myrtle Beach near City Hall

Part II: Atalaya Castle

Part III: Huntington Beach State Park