Learning light

   Light is the life force of all landscape photographers; it can make or break an image.  Learning about light should be your primary goal if you are a landscape photographer. This is an easy primer about light and the difference it can make in an image. Underexposing a stop will often increase the color saturation when shooting at the edges of light. Use graduated neutral density filters, polarizers and solid neutral density filters as needed.
   It is important to remember that when shooting sunrise or sunset there are clues that tell you where you are in the progression of light and time. When shooting at sunrise there a change of hue giving  an indication of the progression of daylight beginning with the predawn colors: blue, lavender, pink, red, orange, yellow...all of these may appear quickly one after the other and when it hits the yellow color, that's when you are about finished with sunrise.
  Sunset is the opposite but after sunset you may be able to continue shooting for quite a while in the twilight hours, even continuing into darkness if you choose to photograph the stars. So here is the progression of sunset: yellow, orange, red, pink, lavender, blue, then black...remember that an hour after sunset there is twilight with beautiful blue skies for photographing cities enabling the buildings to stand out against the sky; whereas with a black sky, the buildings have no edges and disappear.
Also, in the mountains and sometimes along the shore there is a brief moment of alpen glow when the sky suddenly lights up with a pink color after the sun sets.
Here are some examples of the effects of light on an image:

In the upper image, the light is too pale; it was shot a little too early for good color...the lower image was shot shortly afterward when the sun had almost set and color was intense.

Here in the Andes at Mt Fitz Roy: the first image was taken too late after sunrise so it is washed out..the lower one was taken as the sun hit the mountain directly and lit up the red granite.


 The two images below show the effect of photographing in a short time...the sky in the image at bottom was taken right as the sun came up and lasted about 10 seconds..but it gave some color to the sky.  The image below on left was taken a few seconds later when I put the camera in vertical position, however, the light was over.