Twilight photography has a lot of unique challenges compared to daytime photography.

The result of twilight photography shoot is often stunning.   Technically, there is a specific time of day when we shoot twilight photos for our clients:  The very end of Civil Twilight.  For the the techno geeks out there, there are three different stages of twilight. Civil twilight, Nautical twilight, and Astronomical twilight.  They are defined as intervals, in 6 degrees steps, of where the sun is below the horizon:  0-6 degrees, 7-12 degrees, and 13-18 degrees.

To help me remember stuff, I try to come up with things that I can relate them too.  For the perfect time for twilight photography, I relate it to playing football in the street as a kid:

1).     Shortly after the sun went down, when you could still see well enough to play and catch a football, it was Civil twilight.  

2).     After that, just when the streetlights first came on, was the transition to Nautical twilight. You could see most everything, like that fire hydrant that marked the End Zone and all the other players.  It was a bit harder to see the ball, but it was still bright enough to catch it.

3).     Then came Astronomical twilight.  All the street lights were on and in full force, playing football had gotten a lot harder, and that thrown pass would hit you in the face before you could see it. 

So, there you have it.  Twilight photography in a nutshell:  You don’t want to see everything, but you want the lights on and you want to see the subject of your photo.  However, you don’t want to wait so long that it gets too dark and a bad exposure hits you in the face. 

For our clients, we are sticklers for proper color balance.

We’re also picky about getting spot-on exposure of our twilight photos.  To achieve this we use external photography lighting. The same lighting system we use for our interior residential photography.  The color  balance (also called color temperature) of these lights is very close to that of the interior lights of the home we’re photographing.  This allows the windows of the home to be a little bit warm and inviting without turning that ugly orange color of a  pumpkin.  You’ve all seen those types of photos online and know exactly what I’m talking about.

Take a look at the photo included here.  We used our lighting system to illuminate the home in the background. However, I didn’t light the entry because I wanted the entry lights do their own thing.  Because we use lights that are properly color balanced, the home matches the color and brightness of the entry.  Without proper lighting, the lights at the entry and in the windows would be orange. In addition the home would be too dark to see and everything other than the lights would be a very cold blue.  Not really the inviting photo we want to produce.  So, we take the time to do it right and ensure our twilight photography is up to par.  We think it’s important to take those extra steps that result in a higher quality photo for our clients.

If you’re a  real estate agent, Realtor, or Broker call us at (206) 459-4085 when you have a new listing.  We’ll get your on our schedule for photography, drone photos, video, social media video, Matterport 3D, or virtual staging.  We can even put you in touch with our Social Media Manager to help manage your presence across multiple platforms.

You can also follow us on Instagram and see the beautiful photos we create for our clients.