Field notes · sunhour blog
Writing about light, twilight, and planning the shoot.
Photographer-leaning posts on golden hour, blue hour, the science of twilight, moon phases, and how to plan around them in any city on Earth. RSS.
Sunrise Meditation: Choosing Your Window
If you have decided to meditate at sunrise, the next question is which sunrise. The forty minutes around dawn contain three very different windows, each with a different feel.
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Photographing the Northern Lights: When to Look
Aurora photography is mostly a planning problem disguised as a photography problem. Get the timing right and the rest is straightforward.
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Best Times for Landscape Photography by Season
Golden hour shifts more across the seasons than across the day. Here is what each season actually does to the light, and why it changes how you shoot.
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Astrophotography Planning With Civil, Nautical and Astronomical Twilight
The three twilights are not bureaucratic labels — they tell you when astronomers can actually see stars. Here is how to use them to plan a night under the sky.
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Moon Phases and Their Effect on Night Photography
A full moon is a stadium light in the sky. A new moon is the only sky dark enough to see the Milky Way. Pick the wrong phase and the shoot is dead before it starts.
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The Blue Hour: a Quieter, Harder Shot Than Golden Hour
Blue hour gets the second-billing treatment but it is the harder shot of the two. Here is why it matters and how to actually nail the exposure.
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How to Plan a Sunrise Shoot in Any City (Without Getting Burned)
A repeatable checklist for sunrise photography that survives jet lag, unfamiliar streets, and weather. Built around the questions you actually need to answer the night before.
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Why the Magic Hour Varies by Latitude (And Why It Matters)
A YouTube tutorial filmed in Los Angeles will lie to you in Oslo. Here is why magic-hour duration depends almost entirely on latitude, with a rough table.
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What Golden Hour Actually Looks Like: The Science Behind the Colour
The warm, low-contrast light photographers chase is not magic. It is Rayleigh scattering plus a long path through dust. Here is what the physics gives you, frame by frame.
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The 7 Stages of Twilight Every Photographer Should Know
Sunrise and sunset are only two seconds of a much longer story. Here are the seven distinct light stages that bracket them, and what each one is actually good for.
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Need exact times for tonight's shoot? Open the sun calculator or browse 219 ready-made city pages.