Today’s post is for Project 52, a weekly blog project that I am working on with several other talented photographers whom I’ve come to know and love over the past year. In this project, we concentrate on light and spend several weeks exploring an overarching theme. In this month’s theme we explore light at different times of day. So far we have explored morning and afternoon light. This week is evening light, and next will be night.
Evening is a wonderful time to shoot. The hour or so that surrounds sunset is called the “golden hour” for the warm light that it usually provides. Of course, here in Seattle, many evenings are less golden and more gray. Gray clouds, gray skies, gray light, gray everything. In the summer, we have stunning sunsets with gorgeous color, but in the spring one can’t rely on that. Most of this week, in fact, we’ve had gray, cloudy skies in the evening and I began to accept that I would not have a beautiful golden light image to post. But then, this afternoon, the sky cleared and the sun appeared! I was so excited and full of hope that I dragged my family (Avery was literally sleeping) across town to Olympic Sculpture Park for sunset. We arrived a bit early to find surprisingly cold conditions as well as thick cloud cover to the west, which meant the sun might disappear well before the magic hour began (assuming we lasted that long). Luckily, however, there were a few breaks in the clouds, so we were treated to a golden 5 minutes. I didn’t get to take the images that I had in mind, but I’ll take what I can get. Here is an image of the gorgeous sunset, and one of my lovely family, who puts up with these slightly ridiculous endeavors (even if they were cold and ready to leave just as I was getting started). I do love them so!
Please continue along our creative blog circle to see what my friend Linda Hooper has posted. Of late, Linda has focused on out-of-focus images that create a stunning painterly and impressionistic effect. Please click HERE to see Linda’s play on evening light.
kamillachaudhery.com 
Kami these are gorgeous! Beautiful sunburst in the first and the girls look so adorable in the second. Glad you had such a successful trip!
Absolutely worth the golden five minutes. The water and sky feels so tranquil and I love the family shot with the light in their hair.
You clearly made the most of your golden five minutes!! Beautiful! And the light in the girls’ hairs is dreamy!!
What we do for a picture, right? I can completely relate to dragging my family all over in hopes of catching that one fantastic image. I love that you did this, Kami. Despite the weather you made it out there and your golden 5 minutes captured a beautiful sunset and family portrait!!!