What is the Golden Hour in Photography: Using the Lumy App

What is the Golden Hour in Photography?

One of the secrets to achieving great photography is lighting. High noon is one of the worst times to photograph outdoors. The lighting at this time creates harsh, unflattering shadows for your subject. There are of course exceptions to the rule, you can use the harsh light to your advantage and be creative with it.

Golden light occurs twice daily, once before sunrise and once before sunset. The golden hour (also known as the magic hour) may not necessarily be an actual hour. This changes throughout the year depending on the season, daylight savings, and of course your location in the world! Golden light is soft, warm, dimensional, and makes just about everything beautiful.

Golden light is soft. When the sun is near the horizon, sunlight travels through a greater depth of field, reducing the intensity of direct light. Soft light is flattering, so if you love portraiture this is ideal for you. Golden light is dimensional, the directional light creates longer shadows.

Golden light is warm in color temperature. More blue light is scattered so the sun appears rich in oranges and reds.

So now you’ve realized all the benefits of photographing during the golden hour, how do you figure out when for where you live? That’s where the Lumy app comes in.

What is the Lumy App?

Lumy helps you take amazing photographs. It shows the sun’s current location and magic hours. You can use this information to plan your photoshoots. For example, if there’s a location with an amazing view, you can use the app to plan when you should be there.

Features and How to Use the Lumy App

When opening the app you first see the morning magic hour, sunrise, evening magic hour, and sunset.

Double tap for more times like astronomical, civil, solar noon, and nautical twilights. A change of color from dark orange to a deep blue is a subtle hint in indicating the timing of the day.

You can choose a different date and even set alarms to alert you before a specific magic hour by swiping to the right. This is helpful so you don’t have to keep looking at the app and enjoy the day. You can choose to alert 30 minutes before, 1 hour, or 2 hours.

You can check details like the duration of the magic hour and the weather (a percentage of cloudiness and humidity) by swiping to the left.

Another cool feature is changing locations. You don’t have to use the app for your current location only. Maybe you are planning a weekend trip to the coast, you can search for the location and add alerts.

If your trip is a couple of days or a week in advance, you can change the date by swiping down.