goldenhour

Golden Hour: When Sunlight is Warm and Photos are Magical

If you’ve been outside during a nice sunrise or sunset, chances are good you’ve heard the term “golden hour.” It’s one of the best times to do many types of photography and a beautiful time to be outside. This guide will help you understand golden hour, when it happens, and how to make the most of it through various types of photography.

The Best Time of Day to Take Outdoor Portrait Photos

When is the best time of day to shoot portrait photos outdoors? Should we shoot only during the golden hours and avoid midday altogether, or is it better to use the brightest daylight hours to take our portraits with a few simple light modifiers? In this guide, we explore the best times of day for outdoor portraits.

5 Simple Tips to Improve Your Landscape Photography

Landscape photographer and YouTuber Mads Peter Iversen is back with a short list of helpful tips that can help you break the mold and improve your landscape photography. These tips will be particularly helpful for beginners who feel their work is already growing stale.

Forget ‘Golden Hour’: The Arctic Circle Has ‘Golden Days’

In photography, the "golden hour" is the time right after sunrise or right before sunset in which sunlight is warmer and softer -- a look that's valued by landscape and portrait photographers. If an hour isn't enough time for you to get your fill of the special lighting, you might want to visit the Arctic Circle, where you can enjoy "golden days".

Shoot Better Golden Hour Portraits by Harnessing the Sun

The golden hour is popular amongst landscape photographers, but it is definitely worth utilising this for outdoor portraiture. By positioning the sun behind or in front of the subject, the lighting is changed dramatically. It's just like having a giant light on in the studio, but it is golden and delicious in the evening.

How to Shoot Golden Hour Portraits with No Sun (and a Powerful Flash)

What happens if your portrait clients request golden hour lighting... outside of golden hour? That's the situation photographer Pye Jirsa of Lin & Jirsa Photography found himself in recently while shooting a wedding. As you can see in the 4.5-minute video above, Jirsa was able to deliver by using creative lighting, a powerful flash, and a couple of colored gels.

This Aerial Short Film Shows the Beauty of Scotland’s Wilderness at Golden Hour

Freelance aerial videographer John Duncan of Edinburgh, Scotland, recently spent about 5 months taking his camera drone to remote locations around his country, searching for epic landscapes and ethereal light (especially during golden hour).

The fruit of his efforts is this 3.5-minute short film, titled "Wild Scotland." It's a gorgeous tour of Scotland's beauty.

Capture the Magical Golden Hour With Rizon For iOS

A magical moment of soft and warm light, the golden hour is a period slightly before sunset or slightly after sunrise when the sun is low in the sky. Many photographers aim to shoot during these time periods in order to take advantage of the unique natural lighting. Rizon is an elegant new app for iOS that will not only find you the best time but remind you to head outside when the time approaches.

Lumy Arrives on Apple Watch to Put Golden Hour Reminders On Your Wrist

Last September, we featured Lumy, an elegant iPhone app that's designed to help photographers track golden hour and other times of the day with ideal natural light. Today, the company released an update that brings the app to the new Apple Watch, allowing photographers to be reminded of certain lighting conditions with notifications on their wrist.

Skyfire Predicts and Maps Out Where the Best Golden Hour Light Will Be a Day in Advance

When you’re looking to get out and grab some landscape or sunset photography, getting the perfect light is usually a game of chance, but a new web app called Skyfire is looking to change that. By using a proprietary algorithm, Skyfire creates a heat map of light quality, ranked on a scale of 1 to 5, across the United States so you can find the perfect spot and plan your trip ahead of time.

Lumy: A Beautifully Simple iOS App That Will Make Sure You Never Miss Golden Hour

In the past, we've shared both PhotoPills and Golden Hour with you, two much-loved apps that help you plan when the best time to shoot is. Well, today we have add new contender to the lineup.

It’s called Lumy, and in terms of functionality, it falls somewhere between the feature-rich PhotoPills and super-simple Golden Hour, offering only what you need and nothing more through a simple, intuitive and beautiful design.