The brightest sunsets need clean air, which is why New York, Los Angeles and London aren’t famous for theirs.1 Golden hour photography uses the warm light while the sun is less than about 6° above the horizon,2 which lasts about half an hour near the equator and 35 to 60 minutes at mid-latitudes.3 Photographers also call it magic hour.10
A calculator can tell you when that window opens. Whether the light inside it turns golden is up to the air and the clouds.
Sonuby Weather is a free magic hour photography app for iOS and Android. Its Photography report counts down to golden hour and shows the cloud cover, visibility and air quality for the same hours.
Near the equator the sun drops through its last 6° in about half an hour, and in Anchorage in December it takes over two hours.3 The further you are from the equator, the shallower the sun’s path, so golden hour lasts longer:
| Latitude | Example places | Golden hour before sunset (March/Sept · June · December) |
|---|---|---|
| 0° | Quito, Singapore | 27 · 30 · 30 minutes |
| 25° | Miami, Taipei | 30 · 33 · 34 minutes |
| 40° | New York, Madrid, Beijing | 36 · 41 · 43 minutes |
| 50° | Frankfurt, Vancouver, Prague | 43 · 52 · 58 minutes |
| 60° | Oslo, Anchorage, Helsinki | 55 · 80 · 129 minutes |
Minutes from the sun standing 6° high to official sunset, for the northern hemisphere, worked out with NOAA’s solar position equations.3 South of the equator, swap the June and December columns. A ridge or buildings to the west end it sooner.
A golden hour calculator does the same sum for your exact spot. It takes the date and your latitude, and finds when golden hour starts and when the sun sets. Your longitude and time zone turn those moments into clock time.3 In New York, golden hour runs from about 7:50 to 8:30 PM in late June, and from about 3:50 to 4:30 PM in December.4
The morning window runs the other way, from sunrise until the sun climbs to 6°.
The low sun’s light crosses far more air than at midday, and whatever that air carries changes the color. The deep oranges and reds of a clean evening turn to pale yellows and pinks when dust, haze or smoke fill the lowest layer, and the light dims as well.1
That is why deserts and the tropics are known for their twilight color.1 Smoke does the same: wildfires in the western US, Canada and China muted sunsets across wide areas in 1998 and 2003.1
Photo by Raychel Sanner
Rain can go either way. While it’s still falling from the clouds moving away, it turns the sunset a dusky brownish orange. Minutes after it has cleared, vivid reds and oranges spread across the sky.1 The evening a storm clears is worth the drive.
Over most of the United States, late fall and winter bring the best sunsets, since in summer the air moves more slowly and the reactions that make smog and haze run fastest.1 If you’re planning a trip around sunsets, pick those months.
The haze sits in the lowest layer of the air, so a cloud has to be above it to catch clean sunlight.1 Wispy cirrus, 16,500 to 45,000 ft (5 to 14 km) up at mid-latitudes,5 and the mid-level patches of altocumulus glow orange and red. Low stratus and stratocumulus rarely do, unless the air below them is unusually clean, as it often is over tropical oceans.1
A clear sky gives the sun nothing to light, and a low gray deck blocks it. Even a solid high deck can work when a narrow clear strip stays open low toward the sun. The clouds then throw the sunset’s glow down, and the whole landscape turns saffron.1
A golden hour forecast is worth reading by cloud height, not as one total. Sonuby’s Photography report marks golden hour in orange on the sun’s path, and right under it splits cloud cover into high, mid and low cloud, hour by hour.
The cloud chart under the sun’s path shows whether high cloud will catch the light or low cloud will block it.
A cirrus cloud 33,000 ft (10 km) up keeps the sun for a while after it has set for you, and lower cloud loses it sooner.6 How long depends on how fast the sun sinks at sunset, which is slower the further you are from the equator and the nearer it is to winter. In New York in March or September, high cloud stays lit for roughly 10 to 20 minutes after sunset. In Vancouver in December it’s about 20 to 25 minutes, and in Anchorage about 30 to 45. Each is how far the sun can sink before the cloud loses it, divided by how fast it sinks there, from NOAA’s solar position equations,3 and the ranges allow for light bending in the air as it skims the ground.
Scattered high and mid-level cloud catches the light of a sun already low or gone. Photo by Andrew Wulf
Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in June 1991 shows the same delay at its most extreme. It threw small particles 12 to 18 miles (19 to 29 km) high, and for about 18 months sunsets had afterglows. They came into view about 15 minutes after sunset, when the lower air was already in shadow and the particles above it were still lit.1
Don’t pack up when the sun goes down. Wait until the high cloud has gone gray.
On some evenings your forecast shows a clear sky low down and high cloud overhead, and the high cloud still stays gray. In the last minutes before a cloud above you goes gray, its light touches the ground about √(2 × Earth’s radius × the cloud’s height) away toward the sun.6 For cirrus 33,000 ft (10 km) up, that is about 220 miles (357 km), and for lower cloud nearer.
A bank of low cloud there, well beyond your own horizon, switches off the light on your high cloud, the way a distant storm tower can throw its shadow across an afterglow.1 Your local forecast can’t show it. Before you go, look at the cloud cover or satellite map along the direction of the sunset, out to about 300 miles (480 km), a little past where the light touches down. A clear band there and high cloud over you is the evening to be out.
The evening before, look up golden hour’s times for the spot you’ll shoot from, then the cloud forecast by height for those hours. You want some high or mid-level cloud and a clear low layer. Check the visibility and air quality too, and lower your hopes on a hazy evening.
On the day, check the cloud map toward the sun, since the forecast may have changed. Be set up before golden hour starts, and stay after sunset until the last high cloud has gone gray.
Golden hour is the warm light while the sun is up to about 6° above the horizon. Blue hour comes after sunset, or before sunrise, when the sun is 4° to 8° below the horizon. [7] Its blue doesn't come only from the scattering that makes the daytime sky blue: with the sun on the horizon, about two thirds of the blue overhead comes from ozone absorbing orange light. [8]
With the sun on the horizon, its light crosses about 38 times more air than with the sun overhead. [9] The air scatters the blue out of it, leaving redder, softer light. [10] The low angle also throws long shadows that show the shape of a face or a landscape.
Magic hour is another name for golden hour, the short time after sunrise and before sunset when the sun is low. Some cinematographers use it for the time just after sunset instead. [10]
Set the white balance to Daylight rather than Auto, which tends to cancel the warm light you came for. On a tripod, keep the ISO low. Handheld, raise it as the light fades, so the shutter speed stays fast enough. Expose for the bright sky and recover the shadows later, since blown highlights can't be brought back.
It's good light, but not golden hour yet. Two hours before sunset in New York or Vancouver, the sun still stands two to nearly four times as high as when golden hour starts, depending on the season. [3] The light is softer than at midday but still fairly neutral. Use the time to scout and set up.
Resources:
[1] The Colors of Sunset and Twilight, Stephen F. Corfidi, NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center
[2] The Golden Hour: Sunrise, Sunset and Photography, Sunrise-Sunset.org
[3] NOAA Solar Calculator: calculation details
[5] The Four Core Types of Clouds, NOAA JetStream
