Photographic Golden Hour Calculator
Garage Glamour™ Photographic Golden Hour Calculator
Use this Garage Glamour™ Golden Hour Calculator to plan ahead when the approximate golden hour for your location will happen. Basically, enter the information required, and when you calculate the sunrise and sunset, subtract one hour before sunset for the evening golden hour of photography. Take the sunrise time plus one hour to calculate the morning golden hour of sunrise.
The Golden Hour is described as an hour before sunset and after sunrise and provides a spectacular setting for any photographic subject--preferrably a photogenic model. Depending on which coast you are closer to or reside near, most photographers generally agree the "quality of light" of the hour before sunset is the best light to practice the golden hour technique, especially on the West coastal waters.
A word of caution, if you use digital cameras, do not have your camera set to "AWB," or automatic white balance, as this setting will totally wipe out the effect of the golden hour. Depending on the make and model of the camera you use, you will probably have to custom white balance or experiment--for more on white/warm balance, click here. On film cameras, use day-light balanced film for best effect.
Directions:
Select a location from the City pulldown menu, OR select "Enter Lat/Long ->" from the pulldown menu, and manually enter the latitude, longitude and time zone information in the appropriate text boxes. The following sign conventions are used:
| Longitude: |
Latitude: |
| Positive in Western Hemisphere |
Positive in Northern Hemisphere |
| Negative in Eastern Hemisphere |
Negative in Southern Hemisphere |
Latitude and Longitude can be in deg/min/sec, or decimal degrees entered in the "Deg:" field. If you select a city from the pulldown menu, the latitude, longitude and time zone fields will be filled in automatically. If you want to input latitude, longitude or time zone manually, be sure to select "Enter Lat/Long -->" from the City pulldown box, or your numbers will be overwritten by the selected city's location.
You can enter a different time zone for a location by selecting "Enter Lat/Long -->" in the City pulldown box. Otherwise, the time zone associated with the selected city's Local Standard Time will be automatically entered. Selecting "Yes" in the Daylight Saving field will cause the resulting sunrise, sunset and solar noon times to be adjusted forward one hour. If you are uncertain of the time zone for a location, refer to our Time Zone Table.
The program retrieves the current date from your computer, and fills the month, day and year fields. To perform calculations for a different date, simply select a month in the pull down menu, and enter the day and four digit year in the appropriate input boxes. When entering a day or year, you will need to click the "Calculate Sunrise/Sunset" button to update the results for this date.
Once the calculation results are displayed, you may use your web browser's "Print" function to obtain a hardcopy of the results.
For locations above the Arctic Circle and below the Antarctic Circle, when a sunrise or sunset does not occur on the given day the program locates the local time and date of the most recent sunrise or sunset, and the next sunset or sunrise. When this occurs, the UTC fields will display "prior" or "next" information instead of the UTC times.
NOTE: For latitudes greater than 72 degrees N and S, calculations are accurate to within 10 minutes. For latitudes less than +/- 72° accuracy is approximately one minute. See Golden Hour Photographic Calculation Details for further explanation.
Garage Glamour™ nor BLRIS Inc., assume no liability with the use of this calculator. We provide this to give approximate times of sunrise and sunset, please verify the results with your local weather authority before planning a shoot or event--use at your own risk.
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