Mention Ken Rockwell to photographers familiar with Ken’s website and pronouncements, and you will likely get mixed and strong reactions. He is seen by many as the master of misinformation. A tireless self-promoter. Some say a buffoon, but it matters not to him – his website gets enormous traffic, and Ken generates income from various forms of text-link ads and other sources. He is debated and critiqued on countless forums. The controversy, however, only fuels the traffic to his site.

Ken’s assertions are often dramatic. However, no one can be wrong all the time, and even experienced photographers enjoy his site from time to time, sorting the wheat from chaff, often looking, as I do, for validation for things they already know, but just presented more emphatically, passionately, and authoritatively.
On November 17, 2011, I wrote The Magic Hour, about that time of day that artists and photographers have also referred to as the Golden Hour, the hour before or after sunset when the character of the light is very unique, often bathing subjects in a spectacular golden/reddish light.

This has led Ken Rockwell to make a number of outlandish statements:

Glorious light only happens for 60 seconds or less any particular day, if it happens at all. If it happens at all, it usually happens sometime in a window 15 minutes before or after sunrise or sunset.

Glorious light doesn’t happen in the day. It happens at sunrise and sunset. We call this “magic hour” in Hollywood.

Most people sleep through sunrise. They lose half their potential shots. I have to get up at 3 AM, get out at 3:30 AM, get to the location at 4:30 AM, set up by 5 AM and wait for a 6 AM calculated sunrise. I’m crazy. Are you?

Sunset is as tough. Most people are eating dinner while I’m out shooting. I have to jerk around my schedule, as well as the schedule of normal people with whom I travel, to be out at sunset. Photographers have dinner at 4 PM so they can be shooting at 6 PM. A bunch of us were photographing at sunset, and I thought something interesting might happen. The rest of my photography group took off for dinner while I stayed around in the dark. I got this shot, one of my all time favorites, while they were having dinner.

If you sleep at sunrise and eat at sunset you’ll miss the only light that shows things the way I, and many others, like to see them. That’s why most people have never seen colors I show and think I’m making all this up in Photoshop. If I could get these results artificially I would, however one still has to trudge out and get this from nature the hard way.

These colors don’t happen every day. They may happen once a month, once a decade, or once in a lifetime. This shot got the orange color in the sky 20 minutes after the sun set because of ash in the upper atmosphere from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.

9 times out of 10 the sunrise is dull and a complete waste of time. While everyone else is eating dinner I’m out setting up hoping for great light at sunset, and again usually I get nothing. That’s why this takes patience.

You can’t predict nature, even 5 minutes before. I can try, but I never know what’s going to happen. I have to be out there and set up every time. Sometimes what I expect to be dull turns out to be explosive, and sometimes what I expect to be incredible never happens. Nature changes minute to minute.

You can’t expect God to create miraculous color any particular day just because you took that day off for vacation in Yosemite. You need to be out every single day.

You don’t need to be in Yosemite: most of my shots are from my own neighborhood. It’s all about the light and color, not the subject. Ansel just happened to live in Yosemite and waited for clearing storms. It’s not Yosemite; it’s that he was there every day.

Yesterday evening at about 8:15PM, I was walking the streets of the Village. It was a beautiful evening. As I gazed into the sky, I was startled by nature’s drama. Distant buildings both east and west were all aglow, virtually on fire, with the light of sunset. I knew from past experience that 6th Avenue looking south had virtually unobstructed views of the Freedom Tower. I hustled there, and sure enough, I witnessed the most spectacular evening light I have seen in this New York City vista. The Freedom Tower was in brilliant light, framed with Trump SoHo and, nearer by, the triangular shaped residential condominium building at 2 Cornelia Street, evocative of the Flatiron Building.

The photo opportunity could not be missed, and I planted myself in the center of oncoming traffic during red lights. My reckless behavior inspired others, and soon there were no less than 6 people taking photos in the middle of the street. It was reminiscent of my Dead Man Walking, however, on this night, in the sunset glow of the Golden Hour, I was Dead Man Gawking 🙂

More sunsets and spectacular sky views: Night on Bald Mountain, In a Fog, Moonrise Over Hernandez, Back to Our Main Feature, Fire and Ice, Who’s Getting Technical?, Mother Nature, Brooding