Golden Hour Calculator

Golden hour is the hour just after sunrise and the hour just before sunset, when the sun sits low and the light turns warm and directional. In London on a typical April morning, sunrise is around 06:00 BST and the morning golden hour runs roughly 06:00 to 07:00. Evening golden hour runs from about 19:00 to 20:00 (sunset around 20:00). The calculator works out exact times for any of 10 preset cities or any latitude/longitude you enter, on any date.

Times shift dramatically across the year. London in December: sunrise at 08:05, golden hour ends at 09:05; evening golden hour 14:55 to 15:55 with sunset at 15:55. Same city in June: sunrise 04:43, golden hour ends 05:43; evening golden hour 20:21 to 21:21. The further north or south of the equator, the more dramatic the seasonal swing. Reykjavik has a 24-hour golden hour at midsummer; Sydney's golden hour barely shifts season to season because it sits closer to the equator.

Blue hour is the 20 to 30 minutes before sunrise and after sunset when the sun is below the horizon but the sky still glows. It produces a deep blue cast across the entire scene, with city lights and architecture in contrast. The morning blue hour starts roughly 30 minutes before sunrise; the evening blue hour ends 30 minutes after sunset.

Use golden hour for portraits, landscapes with side-lit textures, and anything where you want warm directional light. Use blue hour for cityscapes, architecture and twilight scenes - the artificial lighting (street lamps, building windows) reads at the same exposure as the sky, which is impossible during full daylight when buildings are silhouetted. Blue hour is shorter and harder to plan, which is why arriving 45 minutes before sunset gives you both: blue hour transitions into golden hour without the need to relocate.

Arrive 30 minutes before golden hour starts to scout your composition, set up tripod height and check exposure. Light conditions change every two minutes during the actual golden hour - you have time for maybe 10 to 15 carefully composed frames per shot before the quality drops. Bracket exposures because the dynamic range between bright sky and shaded ground is at its widest just before sunset.

Check the season in the calculator output. Summer evenings give you a long, slow golden hour. Winter golden hour is brief and the angle is so low that long shadows cover most of the foreground. Spring and autumn give the most flattering portrait light because the sun sits at roughly 30 degrees - high enough to light faces from above, low enough to stay warm. The [photography pricing calculator](/photography-pricing-calculator) helps when you are quoting timed sessions, since travel plus golden hour shooting plus editing rarely fits inside a one-hour booking.