Photography with Joe

\ Shooting Golden Hour With a 10–20 mm Lens: One Photographer’s Struggle and Next Steps For weeks, the photographer had been fighting the same battle: every time golden hour arrived, their 10–20 mm lens turned a simple portrait into a lighting puzzle. The soft evening glow that normally makes portraits effortless somehow became harder with an ultra-wide. Faces went dark, skies blew out, and flare streaks sliced across the frame. What should have been easy, warm, dreamy light became a frustrating experiment. The Problems 1. Too Much Sky in the Frame With the 10–20 mm, the lens captured everything—the bright sun, the glowing sky, and the darker ground—all at once. Exposure became a guessing game. If the sky looked right, the subject went murky. If the face looked right, the sky turned into a washed-out strip of white. 2. Shadows on the Face at the Worst Time Golden hour backlight is beautiful with longer lenses, but with a wide angle, it left the subject’s face in shadow. Even a...