17 Golden Hour Portrait Ideas for Samsung Galaxy

Golden hour produces warm, low-angled light, which is more flattering to people’s faces than light at any other time of day.

The tricky part? Since the sky behind your subject tends to be the brightest part of the frame, your camera might think the whole image is brighter than it actually is.

To help you out, we’ve rounded up 17 ways to shoot during golden hour, along with the best Galaxy camera lenses and settings to use for each situation. And we’ve organised the shots by where the sun is in relation to your subject.

Golden hour settings by light direction

Tap to focus. Press and hold to lock focus and exposure on a particular subject. From there, drag the exposure frame elsewhere if you want to decouple focus and exposure. Tap anywhere on the screen to bring up the focus control and a brightness adjustment bar, according to Samsung's S26 user guide. Our AE/AF lock guide walks through both.

When golden hour happens

Samsung points out that the golden hour (the period of time just after sunrise and just before sunset when daylight is softer and redder) can last a relatively short time close to the equator (where the sun moves through those angles faster) and much longer in other latitudes. There’s no set duration; it depends on the season and latitude (see Wikipedia).

Planning apps like Sun Surveyor will give you an idea of when golden hour (and blue hour) will occur, as well as where the sun will be. You can use this to plan out your shot in advance. Just keep in mind that lighting conditions can change rapidly around sunrise/sunset, so you’ll want to get there early to figure out where you want to stand and the best angle for your shot. For more information about the sky itself, see our sunset guide.

The 17 portrait ideas

With the sun behind your subject

• Rim light in the hair. Try shooting into the sun using the 3x zoom. Get your camera to lock on the person’s face and then increase the exposure/brightness until their skin tone looks natural.
• A silhouette on the horizon. Get someone to stand with their profile to the camera and frame them with the sun behind them. Touch and hold the brightest area of sky to lock exposure there; the person should end up looking like a silhouette. Our silhouette guide has poses that read clearly.
• A couple walking into the sun. Position yourself behind them. Use either the 3x or 5x zoom and take a burst of photos by swiping the shutter button. Ideally, you want to capture them with their legs apart as they walk.
• A jump or a skateboard trick against the sun. Switch to Pro mode and select a fast shutter speed (1/1000s works well). Select an ISO and take a burst of photos as they jump.
• Hair or a skirt moving in the wind. Use Pro mode and select a shutter speed of 1/500s to freeze the action. The backlight adds a nice halo effect around the hair.
• Warm blur through grass or leaves. Get creative with objects in front of the sun. Grass, leaves, branches and anything else that’s close by will work. Hold a stem or branch close to the lens and use the 3x zoom. You don’t need to focus on the grass, leaves, or branches; in fact this will probably work better if they’re out of focus.

With the sun to the side

• A character portrait with half the face in shadow. Rotate the model so that the light illuminates one side of the face and expose for the lit cheek.
• Long shadows as the subject. Shoot a long shadow cast onto a wall or pavement. Include part of the person, or leave them out of shot entirely.
• A portrait by a window. Light from the late afternoon sun pouring through a window can provide lovely, warm side lighting for indoor portraits. Position the subject at an angle to the window and expose for the face.

With the sun behind you

• A family or group shot. Have everyone squeeze their eyes shut and count to three before opening them to avoid squinting from the low sun. The light at this time of day is flat and frontal, making it easier to take a great family/group photo.
• A reflection portrait in still water. Find a body of still water (even a puddle will do), crouch low with your phone and select 1x, then compose with your subject and their reflection.
• An environmental portrait on the ultrawide. Switch to 0.6x on your Galaxy. Position your subject in the centre of the frame to avoid distortion (wide angle lenses can distort faces at the edges of the frame) and enjoy including more of the landscape.

Details and extras

• Sun flare between fingers. Clean your camera’s lens, as Samsung says dirty lenses exacerbate lens flare, and shoot your subject with the sun peeking between their fingers (use the 1x camera for this one).
• Close-ups of hands and rings. On the S26 Ultra, Focus enhancer will come in handy here for tight shots of hands (using the 1x camera because the 5x telephoto has the longest minimum focusing distance).
• Portrait mode in a field. Blur is one of the effects you can choose in Portrait mode (and you can use the slider to control how strong the effect is). Samsung recommends using Portrait mode when there’s still plenty of light available, so head out to the fields before it gets too dark.
• A video frame instead of a photo. You can use your phone’s video recording abilities to help you capture the perfect moment. Just hit the capture icon when you play the video back in Gallery and it’ll save the frame as a photo.
• A blue-hour portrait after sunset. Once the sun’s gone down, try out Night mode, aiming for portraits with a lamp or shop window to light your subject’s face.

Settings that keep the warm light

A telephoto lens is a portrait photographer’s best friend. The S26 and S26 Ultra have a 3x telephoto with a 67mm equivalent focal length, according to GSMArena.

67mm is close to ideal for portraits. It flatters the subject’s face and compresses the background into blobs of colour. The Ultra models’ 5x telephoto can shoot great full-length portraits from a distance, but it’ll fall behind in low light because of its small sensor.

• When the camera cools the scene, manually adjust the white balance in Pro mode. Increase the Kelvin value to make images warmer (try it until you get skin tones similar to those you remember from the actual scene).
• On S-series flagship phones that support Expert RAW, you can also shoot in Expert RAW mode, which will save a DNG file that preserves more image detail in the bright sky – great for post-processing.
• If shooting a person against a bright background, make sure your lens is clean – any smudges will cause ghosting and haze.

Posing for low sun

• Ask them to look slightly away from the camera (softer feel) or into the camera (more direct feel).
• Have them do something with their hands, like hold on to their jacket, push their hair back, etc.
• When the sun is behind them, ask them to turn their head slightly towards it. The sun will create a beautiful rim of light along their cheek and hair.
• Don’t be afraid to ask them to move around a bit, because sometimes just walking around and turning back to look at the camera can create a great portrait. Movement can completely change the way light falls on someone!

A quick golden hour edit

Use Snapseed’s Highlights slider to pull back a bit of detail and colour in the skies, and Shadows to lift the detail in the face. The Warmth slider in Tune Image can add to the golden tones, but be careful not to overdo it or skin will take on an orange, rather sunburnt, tone! If you prefer to use Lightroom’s sliders, our Lightroom vs Snapseed comparison covers both editors.