In the last edition of eNews, South Dakota photographer Les Voorhis talked about combating the harsh light and high contrast of the midday sun while searching out wildlife and nature subjects in the historic Black Hills. After a full day of macro work, Voorhis switches gears as the sun begins its descent toward the horizon, when the warm glow of sunset sweeps over the landscape and the wildlife is swathed in the rich hues of early evening.

Much like the early-morning light of sunrise, shooting around sunset is considered one of the “sweet” times of the day, especially for nature and wildlife photography. “At sunset, you’re actually shooting into the good light, so it’s easier to work a subject a little bit more,” Voorhis says. “You don’t have to do as much research as you would have to at sunrise, where the light is best early on and then gets worse. At sunset, you can stumble onto scenes a little bit more and work them as the light improves after the sun goes down—you may get two or three hours of great light at this time of day.”

Getting back to the wildlife (and even a roaming cowboy or two) is an ideal goal for the end of the shooting day, though Voorhis says he works a little differently at this time than he does in the morning. “First, I can afford to be less aggressive at sunset, mainly because of the timing of the light I spoke of earlier,” he explains. “Also, because I live in the fairly dry West, the wind blows a lot, so you’ll have a lot of atmospheric haze from dust that builds up throughout the day. That really warms up and filters the light in the afternoon, much more so than in the relatively clear morning skies. I tend, therefore, to try to get down low in the evening and shoot more things up against the richer, stronger sky color.”

Voorhis uses many of the same lenses as he does at sunrise (including the 10-24, the 17-50, and the 17-35), but he adds a few additional units to his evening arsenal. “I tend to work the extremes at this time of day, so I’ll use the 200-500mm, for example, especially if I’m shooting silhouettes of cowboys,” he explains. “Then I’ll go back to a wide-angle lens like the 17-50mm or the 10-24mm, which give me tons of info at the opposite end.”

His shooting strategy is basically a duplication of what he does in the morning: “If I’m shooting landscapes, I’ll use a slower shutter speed with a small aperture. If I’m shooting cowboys or wildlife, I’ll use a longer lens and a faster shutter speed with a more shallow depth-of-field. And, of course, I turn that custom white balance off so I don’t filter out the warm light.”

Silhouettes can be an effective visual technique to use at the end of the day—especially when you’re capturing wildlife or even an old-time cowboy or two to set the mood of the piece. “Silhouettes are typically best performed by having a strong light source behind the subject, so sunset is perfect for this kind of shot—the subject becomes a black shade against the sky,” says Voorhis.

When exposing for a silhouette, once you know that your light is right behind your subject, be sure to expose only for the light source itself. "In other words, expose for the sunset, rendering your subject into total silhouette," says Voorhis. "It's also very important to make sure that none of the ambient light is striking the front of the subject. A backlight rim can add a nice effect, though."

If you want to go for this type of shot, it’s important to differentiate your subjects as much as possible from both the landscape and other objects in the visual field. “If you have two cowboys up on a hill, your eye may be able to see them distinctly, but if you merge them together in your camera, they may morph together and look like one big black blob in your image,” he explains. “That’s the biggest mistake I see people making when they’re shooting silhouettes: not getting individual, distinct shapes out of their subjects. Many times I’ll put the camera on manual and set the exposure based off of the sky, so when I come back to that dark subject, it doesn’t fool the camera unnecessarily to try to open up the shadow side of the riders and wash out that sky color. The more distinct and graphic the shapes, the more powerful the silhouette will be.”

For more of Les Voorhis’ work, go to www.focuswestgallery.com.