33 Portraits That Use the Golden Hour for Great Lighting

The golden hour around sunset and sunrise are conventionally used to lend great lighting to landscapes and other expansive examples of outdoor photography (see our article on how to photograph sunsets for example), but can equally be used to get great portraits. These examples show that the incredible lighting and shadows can be used as both a feature to light the person or as a great background. Enjoy them and use them as inspiration for your own efforts.

Photo by bryaan films

Photo by Spencer Backman

Image by Huweijie07170

Image by MelancholiaPhotography

Image by Free-Photos

Image by Pexels

Image by Jean-Daniel Francoeur

Photo by Cody Black

Photo by Milan Popovic

Photo by Talen de St. Croix

Photo by Danijela Froki

Photo by Arjunsyah

Image by Ddimitrova

Image by Pexels

Image by Andre Furtado

Photo by Warren Wong

Image by Robert Bejil

Image by Eric Benacek

Image by Sean McGrath

Image by Todd Baker

Image by Daniele Pieroni

Image by Phillip Grondin

Image by Dr. Wendy Longo

Image by Florin Draghici

Image by Chris Willis

Image by John Morgan

Image by Vesna Pukich

Image by Derick Adame

Image by Evan Mitchell

A quick shot after our shoot at Waverly Abbey, sitting in the grass. Strobist: YN460II on 16th power into shoot-through umbrella, camera left.

Image by John O'Nolan

The weather here would make my friends in the Pacific Northwest feel at home (but not necessarily happy): rain, rain, followed by grey and then some more rain.
Summer is slow to come – I've never experienced anything like this in June in NJ before. Here is another shot from a few weeks ago when there was some sun 😉 Happy Sunday everyone.

Image by Nathan Siemers

Image by Ben Cheng

Image by Josh Connell

Image by Andrei Ianovski

14 Comments

I LOVE Golden Hour! Great shots, they really show the versatility you can get during this lighting phase. Here are my favorite shots I’ve taken that show off the sun’s gorgeous light!