What Is Golden Hour? And How It Differs from Magic Hour
Golden hour is the stretch just after sunrise and just before sunset when the sun sits low enough that the light goes warm and soft. Roughly, it runs from the horizon up to about six degrees of solar altitude.
Also called: magic hour · golden light
Golden hour, magic hour, blue hour
The three get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. Golden hour is the sun low but still up. Blue hour comes after it has set, while the sky still carries soft blue light and there is no direct source. Magic hour is the loose crew term for the whole window either side of sunset, when the light is worth shooting and going fast.
None of them lasts an hour. Near the equator golden hour can be over in twenty minutes. At high latitude in June it can run past two hours. Your latitude and the date decide it.
Why it is hard to schedule
It is short, it moves every day, and it depends on whatever is standing between the sun and your set. A courtyard with clean low sun in June can sit in a building’s shadow at the same clock time in October.
A sunrise and sunset table cannot tell you that. Knowing sunset is at 7:28 says nothing about the sun dropping behind the block opposite at 6:50.
