Have you ever been out to an amazing scene around sunrise or sunset and seen a gaggle of people with cameras standing around and snapping pictures?  Have you ever wondered what they’re doing and why?  They’re taking photos during the “golden hour.”  If you’ve ever wondered what that means and when it is, then this article is for you.  Today, I talk about what the golden hour is and why it is important to photography.

If you walk for a while in photography circles, you will eventually hear the term “golden hour.”  It’s a common term which landscape photographers, portrait photographers, and more will use when deciding when to take a photo.  However, if you don’t know what’s going on, you might get a bit confused with the term.

What is the “Golden Hour?”

Firstly, the golden hour is not an actual hour block of time.  It is actually 2 windows in a day, of almost an hour each, where the sun is low on the horizon and shining through much more atmosphere than usual.  This added atmosphere softens the light making it ideal for photographers of all kinds.

The time blocks of golden hour are approximately as follows:

* Please note that these times are plus or minus a few minutes as each day’s a little bit different.  Seasons and weather make an impact on these windows as well.

If you would like a more visual idea of what the golden hour is, I can’t think of a better photo in my portfolio to demonstrate this than the one below.  It shows the sun in the right general position for optimal lighting conditions in the golden hour.

How to Track Golden Hour

These days, there are plenty of options out there to help you track golden hour.  Its windows depend highly upon your location and time of year.  This is why you will need to enter both a location and a date into any tracking applications you choose to use.  Some may do this for you but both variables are required in order to make the equation works.

I happen to use an app called Golden Hour which is available for Android on the Google Play Store.  This app will not only give me the times of each golden hour, but also several other marked times of day such as blue hour, twilight, and full dark.  I refer to this app frequently when I’m planning a photo shoot.  With it, I can make enough time to arrive and still have the best light ahead of me.

There are plenty of other options out there for tracking golden hour.  This is one of the more popular apps out there for photographers of all kinds.  A simple search of your app store of choice or an internet search will yield plenty of results for you to choose from.

Conclusion

The golden hour is a highly popular double window of time each day when the sunlight is at its softest and so are the shadows.  It’s found surrounding both sunrise and sunset everyday.  Photographers of all kinds, especially landscape photographers, really love the soft light which the extra atmosphere gives to the scene in front of the camera.  If you want to track golden hour, there are plenty of options on the market, free and paid.  Any of these options will give you the information you want.

So, the next time you see a crowd of photographers gathered around a scenic vista around sunrise or sunset, you know exactly what they are up to.  They are taking advantage of the gorgeous light which golden hour has to bestow.