I love shooting at twilight on a warm evening. A few weeks ago on my Blog “Controlling the Sun“, I talked about ways to deal with harsh sunlight during a summer mid-day shoot. This week’s post is about shooting at twilight, when you are at about f-nothing! One of my favorites times to shoot! All these photographs were taken at the same spot. How do you use light, composition, and a bit of camera movement to achieve very different effect in each photograph? These images were shot with the last few seconds of light on the horizon during a workshop I taught with my friend Rolando Gomez in Costa Rica.

This photograph was lit with a portable 1200WS strobe made by Hensel, through a Chimera Beauty Dish, on the right side of the frame. This beauty dish folds up small enough to fit in your camera bag. Start your exposure with “element you can not control,” (I say this a lot) in this case, it is the ambient light on the horizon. Use your camera meter to determine this exposure and then underexpose the image by 1 stop, to give you deeper colors in the background. I use a Sekonic 478 flash meter to match my strobe output to the ambient light. If you are creating this type of image using studio strobes or speed lights, make sure your camera is on manual. My color balance is daylight.

When composing the photograph, pay attention to all elements you can incorporate into to your photograph. I like reflections, use it to your advantage! This photograph was shot with a Nikon D800 with a with Nikon 70-200 f2.8 lens at ISO 400, F4.5 & shutter speed 1/5, hand held.

This is one of my favorite tricks in low light photography: Swirling images. This is all done in camera, not in photoshop! This is a single light photograph with the Hensel strobe & Chimera beauty dish. This image was shot ISO 200 F4.5 and Shutter speed 1/2. To add a swirling effect to the image, I rotated the camera clockwise at the end of exposure.

I do this sometimes for portrait assignments, wedding receptions and events where I’m looking for a different feel to the image. (I will do another blog post on this: How to swirl images!)

Last, I want to finish with this image. In this case I didn’t use a strobe, because I wanted the silhouette of the model. I love the feel of the gold light bouncing off the water in the foreground, to pull you into the image. This photograph is shot with ISO 200, F3.5 & shutter speed 1/100. You can create a such a different feel in the same location by changing how you use the light.

Thank you to our great models Heather Carden and Candice Marie.

About The Author – Rick Friedman

Rick Friedman has been a photojournalist for over three decades. Based in Boston, he travels the world for numerous publications, corporations, advertising assignments and film and television productions. His published work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Nature, USA Today, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Stern, Discover and many other publications. He has produced over 75 book and magazine covers.

Rick has been teaching his “Location Lighting Workshops™” for the past 8 years across the US and UK. Rick has taught thousands of people his style of practical lighting. The “Location Lighting Workshops™ Tour” has many events over the next few months including the Telluride Photo Festival and the Societies Convention in London. Please look on the “Workshops” page for dates and locations. Workshop sponsors have included Canon, ASMP, SWPP, Columbia College, Hunts Photo, Unique Photo, MidWest Photo, Dynalite, PocketWizard, Chimera, Sekonic, Hoodman, ExpoImaging, Sunbounce, Rosco, PNY, LensBaby and ThinkTank. Rick presented his “Location Lighting Workshops™” on “Creative Live”

Rick has photographed every presidential candidate from President Jimmy Carter to President Barack Obama. “Rick Friedman on the Campaign Stump” is a Photo District News article discussing Rick’s coverage of presidential campaigns. The books Hillary Clinton, Infra Structures, and The Gourmet Prescription are a few of his projects. Rick is the past President of the Boston Press Photographers Association. He has won awards from the American Society of Media Photographers, the National Press Photographers Association, and the Boston Press Photographers Association. He has work in the permanent collection of Harvard University and the Newseum in Washington, DC and has had one man shows at Boston City Hall and the Boston Public Library in addition to having his work displayed in numerous other shows.

Rick has photographed several thousand authors, professors, scientists for publications and for major universities. His archives contain one of the largest private collections of portraits of noted academics.

“One of the greatest things about being a freelance photojournalist is the great variety of assignments I get to cover and the places I get to go. I could be covering the President one day, spending the following day with a noted scientist or professor (or both) and the following day over seas on a travel story. I truly have the best job in the world”.

Rick writes the weekly blog Tuesday’s Tips and you can follow his work on FB Location Lighting Workshops

Contact: rick@rickfriedman.com 617.510.5653