There is no bad time for photos

Early morning or “Golden hour” is said to be the best time for photography. I do believe that may be the case for most people- but for me, not necessarily.

And I repeat, “for me”, that is. Light is… situational. Or it depends on your preference. If I wanted a beautiful portrait with even light, then sure, I’d wake my ass up at 5:00 to catch that morning light. Or I’d make sure to schedule a shoot right before sunset.

Early morning portrait. Casey, 2020

Late afternoon portrait indoors. Miki, 2019

However, if I want a more graphically interesting photo, especially for something candid or “streety”, I personally enjoy midday more. The odd reason for this here, is that in a dense and vertically constructed city like Tokyo, the most interesting light patterns occur during midday. In fact, no light reaches the populated areas of Tokyo in the afternoon as it is cock-blocked by poor city planning (at least from an aesthetic POV).

Since Tokyo has a lot of glass, lots of light bounces around during midday and people move in and out of this physical environment. This allows me to create more graphically compelling images, as opposed to images with standalone beautiful or interesting subjects.

Scanned Print. Taken during midday. The cooler overall color of the image matches the urban environment and monotonous suit worn by the passerby.

In addition, as a die-hard color photographer, afternoon light condenses most of my images to a warmer hue. At times this is a merit, but sometimes this can also be a disadvantage to me if I find interest in the true-to-the-eye real colors in front of me. All colors get slightly washed away by an orangish hue, and that can make OR break an image.

Scanned image. If this was taken during golden hour, the green tint wouldn’t appear on this photo.

Lastly, at least in Tokyo, most human activity is seen during midday. If you want to maximize your opportunity to create images with people, then midday provides you with the most potential/ideas.

Steve McCurry is known to be the “Prince of darkness” (what a cool alias) since he shoots in very early morning. I think this is pretty good advice, but this just fits his style because he shoots color, and a lot of his images are centered around single subjects, are striking, and not overly complex. The early morning light is a great package for this because tonalities are quite neutral or somewhat cool, and there aren’t millions of people roaming the streets.

As you can see, the important part is to know what you’re going for, and find the time of day that suits you best.

Or if you’re hungry and have loads of time on your hands, why not just shoot all day.

Thanks for reading.