The Golden Hour or Magic Hour is the best time for photography and filmmaking. The best shots were recorded in this hour, and filmmakers used to time this hour to capture more intimate and moving scenes.
When is the best time to take pictures? This is a difficult question to answer, but the best answer is definitely the golden hour. It is a period of time when the sunlight is soft, but warm and casts long shadows.
So the golden hour or magic hour is the short period just after sunrise or before sunset. The sunlight is redder and softer than the rest of the day when the sun rises in the sky.
Also Read: Sunrise, Noon, Sunset: How to Plan Your Outdoor Photography
Away from the intense noon sunlight, it’s golden hour that landscape and portrait photographers often present their best work. You can also have two classes with the golden hour, as it comes just after sunrise and before sunset. Here’s what golden hour is, why it produces such a warm quality of light, and how you can use it to improve your photography.
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What is the advantage of the golden hour period?
The golden hour comes with dawn and dusk, and indicates the first and last light of each day. From now on, we’ll refer to these hours as Gold hours.
These are magical times for taking photos because the sun’s light rays pass through the Earth’s atmosphere. At this time, sunlight passes through more dust, more water, and more air particles, which absorb more photons. If less sunlight passes, that’s why you can look at the sunset without getting blinded.
At this time of the day, a faster shutter speed can be obtained in the camera. This allows photographers to be more creative. A thicker atmosphere scatters blue light, which has a very short wavelength, so warmer colors at the red end of the spectrum tend to dominate. This is the reason for sunset red-orange.
However, the long shadows created by the low angle of the sun during the golden hours are just as important as photography. Not only do they allow for creative combinations, but their mere presence creates a sense of time that is, they are timeless moments.
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Photography in golden hours involves the use of constantly changing camera settings. However, the big advantage of shooting in gold hours is that it is difficult to make fatal mistakes when shooting in manual exposure mode. For example, overexposing the sky is difficult to obtain, because the sky is less bright than it is when the sun is at a higher angle in the sky.
Landscape and Architecture Photography in Golden Hours
Pictures of nature and buildings can appear more beautiful with the dim light of golden hours. The dynamic range is narrower, which means it is possible to set an exposure that captures more detail in both the shadows and highlights of the scene. The sky is more colorful around the buildings, and it changes quickly before your eyes.
However, for landscapes, the best reason to go out during the golden hours is that you can use longer shutter speeds to capture more detail either in a steady scene (which may require setting the aperture to f / 16 or so). Or capture movement in photos of waterfalls, for example, or the movement of water in tides on the beach. Either way, you’ll be amazed at how different shutter speeds can be in the same shot as the sun rises or goes down.
Portrait photography in golden hours
Portrait photographers also benefit from the golden hour. Not only does the warm colors give a golden hue to their subjects, but the sunlight will not force people to close their eyes while filming. And sharp dark shadows won’t appear on their faces either. Whereas, direct midday sun often means using a fill flash, to show some detail in the shaded areas of the face. They are in the golden hour completely natural.
The golden hour also helps with formation. As a picture contains a person with depth in the image with the sun. Moreover, if the sunsets are hitting your targets from the side or the back, they can have a flash or a halo around them that catches your eye.
The same goes for the illuminated shot, which is only really possible when the sun is low on the horizon, either compositionalally or due to the sun’s low intensity. All of this is why smart wedding photographers tend to hang around long after the ceremony.
How does the weather affect the golden hour period?
As with all photography, bad weather can spoil even the best of settings. However it can benefit from any change in the weather. Clouds in the sky can combine with sunset or sunrise to produce a beautiful sky. If you are lucky enough to see something like this, start looking for reflections in lakes and even ponds. If the clouds cover the sky completely, you will not be able to get golden sunlight or show the sun in your shots.
