Outdoors
Outdoors
Chasing the golden hour, all year
The hour before sunset turns ordinary streets cinematic. Here is how to find it wherever you live, in every season.
Golden hour is not a place you have to travel to. It arrives at your door every clear evening, about an hour before the sun goes down, and asks only that you step outside to meet it.
When the sun sits low, its light travels through more atmosphere and loses its harsh blue. What is left is warm, soft and forgiving — the light every photographer waits for and most of us walk straight past.
Where to stand
Put the sun a little to your side rather than behind you. Look for something to catch the light: long grass, a brick wall, the side of a face. The magic is in what the low sun rims, not in the sun itself.
The best light of the day is also the most generous. It makes the ordinary look like it was worth showing up for.
In summer that means a late evening lap; in winter it can fall over lunch. Learn the rhythm of your own latitude, and you will never miss it twice.
Sofia Lindqvist
Writer at large, Sollees
Sofia writes about light, landscape and the small rituals that make a day feel like your own. Based in Bergen, usually outdoors by eight.
