Humans at sunset and sunrise

What you need to know:

One budding photographer has found a way to set her work apart by focusing on photography at sunrise and sunset. The results are mind blowing

Khasim Ndiwalana is a visual art photographer whose latest exhibition “Sun Earth and Humans” was showcased at Bayimba International festival. In his 20s, this artist takes photographic art works from across different parts of Uganda.

“I love portraying what humans do at sunrise and sunset,” he says as he interprets the three photo series of fishermen. These two men he captured setting up their traps to catch fish on Lake Edward by night return as the sun rises to check whether they caught some fish in their nets.

The dark sky before sunrise have grey/black clouds over the fishermen on the lake yet it clears out beautifully to leave a blue shiny golden as the sun finally comes up. There is contrast created with the golden orange/red sky.

“These hours are golden hours with nice colours,” he explains. Ndiwalana, who currently works with Studio 25, started professional photography in 2012, capturing events both with photography and videography. In his photos, the people are an outline giving the viewers an intersection between the both the background and the human.
“You have to creatively portray your wok in a different ways from most people. My intention was to have silhouettes to give visual to beauty in nature, colours and show how the clouds move,” he adds.

What it takes to get the shots

To capture these shots of sunrise and sunset, Ndiwalana narrates; “I take my time, wake up very early and look at the way earth and nature move, how the colours change...and use my camera to capture these moments in raw format.

I edit them and make adjustments in photo shop and the light room, then laminate them on boards.

The frames are of strong hard wood-like boards with a speck glow. They can be hanged in picture frame form on walls to add beauty to one’s living room or bedroom. They are both portrait and landscape photographs.

To allow the background to be more visibly coloured, I expose the humans to less light so that they form a shadow. It is done with camera settings, since cameras can measure light temperature. The higher the temperature, the warmer/brighter the colour ranges.”