The GOLDEN Hours

You may or may not have heard photographers talking about the Golden Hour or the Magic Hour or the Perfect Hour and wondered what this mystical entity is and when to find it.  In actual fact there are TWO Golden Hours per day !!!!  One at the start of day and one at the end of day.

Simplistically photographers generally define the Golden Hour(s) as the 1st hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset.  The reason for this is mainly because generally the light during these two hours are either not yet "harsh" or has lost most of it`s "harshness".  The light has a "softer" quality and colours tend to be more "pastel-like" which is pleasing to the human eye.

This definition is in actual fact not really correct because one can see the sunlight before the Sun comes over the horizon and also after it has descended below the horizon. In strict astronomical terms the time from seeing the light to actually seeing the Sun is called the twilight period and happens both at the beginning and end of each day.

While this is generally true the locality at which the photography is taking place will also have a major influence on the quality of the light.  In dry desert environments like the Namib Desert the golden hours really could be more appropriately be called the "Golden Half-hours".  This is also true for areas where the surrounding rock and sand have a very high pure silica content.

Weather, specifically clouds, also play a major part.  In the aforementioned desert area the presence of cloud cover may actually extend the golden hours.  As clouds are a rare phenomenon in deserts a photographer will be very lucky is clouds are actually present.  Look at the photograph from Dead Vlei in the Namib Desert of Namibia.  The photo in the previous post was taken about TWO hours after sunrise and still exhibit a pleasing soft light quality.

Further sunlight  may only be visible at a certain locality when the Sun is near or at the apex of it`s path.  Good examples will be in case of the Slot Canyons in the American States of Utah and Arizona.  Here the actual "Golden Hour" may be a shorter or longer period depending on the width and depth of a particular canyon.

Although it seems that quite a number of photographers primarily do landscape, read sunset/sunrise, photography during the golden hour, the light may well be suited for "other" photography as well.