Anchorage in the evening, last Friday. 9:20pm. Still quite a ways from sunset.

The picture to the right is typical of Anchorage, this time of year.  Or rather, the light is fairly typical.  We’re not so far north that we get sunlight 24×7 (plus it’s too early yet), but we do have direct sunlight until nearly 11pm (officially, we already get over 20 hrs of sun per day).  But due to the angle, we end up with relatively weak sunlight for large parts of that.

To a photographer, that gives us a few advantages.  The golden hour, for example: it lasts well over an hour.  None of the hurrying to take a shot in 15 minutes, like we see so often when we make it to Hawaii. The tradeoff on the golden hour: the light often isn’t as brilliant and saturated, like you see in places further south.  So yesterday was an exception.

While on the topic of benefits of northern light, one of the things I’ve noticed: in more temperate areas, there is a definate period of time where the sun is directly overhead and light is either too harsh or just unflattering.  You still get that here, but even in the middle of summer the sun isn’t directly overhead.  No, it’s always at an angle, which means there’s very little time where  you can’t do landscape photography.  Or even outdoor portraits with natural light – the sun is that low most of the summer.