Twilight is one of my favorite times for photography. I love the gentle and colorful light that falls across the landscape during this time of day. The photo above, of Mount Rainier reflecting into a small lake, shows the kind of light that most nature photographers think of when they think about photographing twilight: darker and very blue. Twilight is much more than just this single type of light, and this article explores some of the other opportunities for photography during this time of day.
What is twilight?
There are three phases of twilight and they all refer to how far the sun is below the horizon:
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Astronomical Twilight: The sun is between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon.
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Nautical Twilight: The sun is between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon.
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Civil Twilight: The sun is between 0 and 6 degrees below the horizon.
For nature and landscape photography (not including night photography), the light from around the end of nautical twilight through civil twilight at sunrise and the light through civil twilight until the beginning of nautical twilight at sunset is the period that I consider “twilight” and, during this period, I am interested in photographing the full progression of light as it evolves.
I took the photo above well before sunrise, right as the first light of the day started to illuminate the landscape, and as nautical twilight faded into civil twilight. As I already mentioned, the scene is very blue in terms of the color. This is why nature photographers often refer to twilight as “the blue hour.” (Despite this term, the “blue hour” does not actually last an hour at most lower and middle latitudes. Instead, it is usually the “blue five-to-ten minutes” and then transitions to what I would consider night photography, with much longer exposures and more technical complexity.) The conditions shown in the photo above typify the type of light we can expect during the period of time known as the blue hour.
My orientation to the landscape also mattered. In terms of direction, this scene is front lit, which means the sun was rising behind me as I faced toward the mountain. With this orientation, the light falling upon the scene is low contrast. This lower contrast means that the scene does not have much visual texture, except for the tonal contrast between the bright snowfields on the mountain and darker subjects across the rest of the scene. This orientation, facing my subject with the sun rising (or setting) behind me, is my preference when I am out photographing around twilight because I prefer this softer, flatter light, although I do try to adapt to the conditions and might face the other direction as opportunities arise.
