First things first. Let's clear the confusion. The terms 'golden hour' and 'magic hour' are completely interchangeable. Something else to note is that there is a golden hour at both ends of the day and there are also two blue hours outside of those golden hours. Think of blue hours as book ends to the golden hour books...
As an example: Today [April 4], morning blue hour went from roughly 0540 to 0605 and morning golden hour followed from roughly 0605 to 0710. Then this evening there will be an evening golden hour from roughly 1855 to 2000 followed by an evening blue hour from roughly 2000 to 2030.
Shooting at Golden Hour
Lighting the scene from a lower angle with a warmer light vs a higher angle with white light.
Shooting in the day means two things; the light is very cool white light and more importantly-the light is coming straight down from overhead
There are cases where this type of lighting can work but more often than not, especially if we're talking about portraits, this light is very unflattering.
When we talk about the warmth or colour of light we often use temperature as a means of accurately describing the colour of the light and Kelvin is the scale that we use to do so.
Golden hour is around 2000-3000 K and blue hour is around 3000-4000 K. Compare that to direct noon sunlight at about 5500 K and light from a blue sky at 9000 K, golden hour and blue hour are much different in colour temperature. When you get above 4000 K the light appears white and when you compare images from golden hour and broad daylight you can really see why it's called magic hour.
Apps for finding golden and blue hour
For Android devises I would strongly advise getting the 'Golden Hour'
app. Despite the name the app does actually tell you when it's golden hour and blue hour as well as a lot of other types of light including Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight and Astronomical Twilight.
For iPhone I would suggest using 'Helios'. The app allows you to set alarms days ahead of time for golden hour and blue hour separately including an interactive map as a visual aid of the angle of the sun at what time of day.
In conclusion
Golden and blue hours are great for adding that 'magical' look to your images. Using an app on a mobile device allows you to get information on golden and blue hour timings based on your location making it more convenient than ever to get it right. I hope all that talk about Kelvin didn't scare too many of you away.
'Appy shooting.
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