The Golden Hours

You may have heard of the "Golden Years". How about the "Golden Hours"? Technically, when speaking of photography, the Golden Hour is the hour after sunrise, and the hour before sunset. At this time, the light is optimal for landscape photography. The light has such a rich warm color at this time of day, and the shadows are low. Sure, these hours are "optimal", but you if your body rejects early morning, you can expand the golden hours to a couple of hours beyond. Up to about 9:00AM and after 6:00 PM.

These two photos were taken at 5:45 AM, 30 minutes after sunrise. As you can see, the richness of color adds to the pleasing tones. Also, the sun low in the sky, creates a great amount of detail in the sand via long shadows.





These two photos were taken at 7:45 PM, about 45 minutes before sunset.






















Technically, the four previous photos were all taken during the golden hours. Like I said, If you are "sunrise averse", you can stretch it a bit. The colors are not so rich, the shadows are not so low, but it beats the harsh lighting of mid-day.

These photos were taken at around 8:40 AM, almost 3-1/2 hours after sunrise. The lighting was very nice for both shots. The tiger lily was in the shade, but the background was sunlit. As you can see, the light in both photos is still very warm and pleasing.



You might find that you want to warm up the photo during post-processing in order to give the impression of the "Gloden Hours". There is nothing wrong with that. The job of the photographer is to envision a scene, then portray it as envisioned. Sometimes, a little manipulation is needed to create the effects that the photographer wanted to portray. Don't forget that your eye sees things very differently than a camera does. The human eye is an amazing device that has a dynamic range much wider than a photographic sensor. You need to take that into account when picturing an image in your mind.