For lovers of photography, getting the perfect shot is an art form. It requires dedication, patience, and a solid understanding of light. You need to be able to place yourself in the correct position, where the light falls just in the right way, the subject is in focus, and the composition of your frame highlights the features you want to focus on. Get all of this right, and you’re bound to end up with some fantastic pictures.
One particular method which many photographers use to get dramatic and vibrant shots is to take them during the golden hour.
The golden hour is the period of time directly after sunrise and just before sunset. At these times, the sun is very low in the sky and the light it emits behaves differently. As the light rays are scattered through a greater volume of the atmosphere, you may often see brightly coloured orange, pink or red skies. The light itself is also much softer, reducing glare and giving your images more of a golden glow effect.
As the sun is lower in the sky at the golden hour, you can also make the most of the long shadows cast by buildings, people, or any object that you’re photographing. These extended shadows make for dramatic images as their silhouettes stretch out at abnormal lengths.
am
pm
To create our golden hour index, we first created a list of target locations. These included the 20 most populated cities in the UK, as well as a list of some potential travel destinations for 2021.
We then found the time of the sunset and sunrise in each of our target cities using sunrise-and-sunset.com. We then used the hour after sunrise and before sunset to determine the golden hour in each location.
