Shooting photos during this time will give some cool silhouettes for anything on the horizon, and can lightly illuminate a scene depending on the length of your shot.īlue “hour” is an even shorter time than golden hour. City lights are will be on but the last light from the sun will still allow things to be visible without any outside help. The sky is transitioning from night to day or day to night and there is a nice gradient from blue to orange. Instead of golden tones across the landscape, there is a cooler color across everything giving a bluish, nighttime feel. In my opinion, people are missing out if they don’t take advantage of this time. Sometimes I feel bad for the blue hour because people forget about it. If you’re somewhere in Alaska during the summer, then you could have 24 hours of golden “hour.” The golden hour is a great time to shoot and probably is the time when most people get great landscape shots, but don’t forget about what happens in addition to golden hour! This will apply to the rest of the discussion as well. The actual length of the “hour” will depend on the time of year and your location on the globe. Just reverse that for the evening golden hour. In the morning the “hour” will begin before the sun breaks the horizon (when it’s about 4* below the horizon) and then ends when it goes above 6*. Technically speaking, the golden hour happens when the sun is below 6* in the sky. Sometimes they are more than an hour, and sometimes they are less. one at sunrise and one at sunset, they don’t only happen with the sun above the horizon, and they aren’t strictly an hour. Sometimes it’s annoying because there are entirely too many people around you, but the light is good and so why not set up for a shot? Golden hour is a great time to shoot because the sun is low and creates a nice, warm light (golden) without the hard shadows that you see in the middle of the day. that time of day when scenic overlooks are overloaded with photographers trying to get their tripods in the best possible spot. So what are the characteristics and differences of each of these times? Well, let’s take a look… Now, whenever I am out late or up early, I try and watch the sky change and determine the exact change from one to the next, but that is pretty difficult. When I learned about the differences, I immediately began thinking about all the mornings and nights I had spent watching the sky change and could absolutely make sense of the times and changes I had witnessed in times passed. 3 twilights?! Yes, 3! Well, maybe 3 distinct parts that together make up the whole. I knew about the “Golden Hour” (that magical time that everyone with a camera knows about) and “Blue Hour” (the not as well known cousin that people get less excited about), but I didn’t know about Civil, Nautical, and Astronomical Twilight. I did not fully understand this for awhile, but when I began to learn about the different parts of the transition I wanted to get out in the early morning and evening to shoot even more. Sunrise and sunset are a little more complex than just “day to night” or vice versa, at least for photographers (and navigators), because there are different types of light and the illumination of the sky doesn’t just simply go from daylight to the black of night. It is incredibly satisfying to be outside during these times and doubly so if you get some amazing photos, especially if you decided to get up hours before daybreak just to get a shot. Why? Because the light during this transition makes the world look amazing! Mountain faces light up and skies come alive at the beginning and ending of the day. As landscape photographers the transition from night to day or day to night are our favorite times to shoot.
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