Photographing Spring

As the light begins to extend as we approach Spring Equinox (happy spring!), our bodies want to wake up earlier and stay up later, whether our schedules or minds want them to or not! I'll be the first one to admit that I'm not a morning person, but every photographer will attest that there's something magic about the "magic hours."

The "magic hours" are the times around sunrise and sunset where the light is simply magical. It catches the ridgelines and mountainsides turning them to rose, it glistens off water and reflects off the clouds, but while it's magical for some subjects, it's also not good for some.

For instance, faces become back-cast, shaded, glared, or blown out, but silhouettes are gorgeous during the magic hour. Action shots are blurred out of focus and again dark or blown out, but the animals are always out at the magic hour, especially in spring. And the spring season adds to the magic hour because the light is still softer due to the sun being still relatively low (depending on latitude).

Here are some tips for photographing spring in the magic hour:
Use a tripod if you have one
Set your ISO to 400 or 800
Set your white balance to cloudy to catch the full dimensions of the light
Set your F-Stop to the highest setting (24, 32...) so that the hole is very small and will get everything in focus. This will likely set your aperture to its lowest under these lower light conditions, so the tripod will come in handy. If you do not have a tripod, move both settings to the middle to catch as much light, dimension, and focus as you can.
Snap a few shots for practice, then begin to think about the composition of the image and play around with the light.
For silhouettes, move the body off center to focus on the background to get the light setting right, then move the camera back to center to shoot.
Test your panoramic settings.
Get up before dawn and watch the process, sunrise magic hour last about 2 hours, sunset magic hour is only about one hour.