After the First Snowfall... A Golden Evening

I'm sure not everyone is thrilled with a foot of heavy snow.  But as a snow lover, it made me smile last Friday when the first storm of the season came and Laurie and I could hunker down, have a fire in the fireplace, and drink hot chocolate. (Plus we did not lose electricity like some 35,000 others in the state!)

Things got even better by about 4:30 when the storm slide by and we had some beautiful golden light. I was reading when Laurie called out that I should grab my camera and go outside.  I am so glad she noticed what was happening to the light!

Lots of people saw a similar light show, as there were many images sent into local television stations and several of my friends posted similar images on Facebook and Instagram.

I captured these views across wetlands surrounding (on two sides) our house:

The golden hour on the way home from work

I'm sure my iPhone would have done a decent job with this scene, but I'm glad I take a serious camera with a nice zoom with me going back and forth between home and office. This was slightly cropped from the 28mm equivalent wide angle end of my zoom lens... which pretty much is the same as the 30mm equivalent of my iPhone camera.

... I was driving over the Concord River at about 4 p.m. and saw some nice golden light as the sun went below the tree line behind me. Conveniently, and just in time, there was a boat landing with parking off to the side of the road. I say just in time because in less than a minute the light on the trees on the other side of the river was gone. 

Images from coastal Maine: The golden hour

The "golden hour" is often viewed as the best time to take photographs.  Typically it's one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset.  But I believe this has to be taken loosely, as it depends on your location.  Technically, according to Wikipedia, the golden hour is created when the sun is at an altitude of 10-12 degrees.  In the Arctic circle I think this could last most of the day.

The golden hour is known for its soft and warm light.  There are no harsh shadows or bright highlights, such as occur during the middle of the day, and which are hard for a camera to record.

During a two week vacation in Maine, I took a few images during the golden hour.  However, with the sunrise so early in the morning (twilight around 4:45, as I recall) it was pretty hard to motivate ourselves to wake up, grab coffee, and go out and meet the morning mosquitoes.

The first three were taken with a point and shoot camera.  I'm a big fan of small cameras.  In the first instance, I took shots with both a point and shoot and a dSLR.  Though technically the dSLR had better results (but not that much better), the lighting and composition was just a little better with the point and shoot.  It goes to show me that lighting and composition are far more important than the camera you are using.

In the second and third scenes a point and shoot was I had with me at the time.  And the final shot was taken with an Olympus dSLR with my best lens.  I tried this final scene with my point and shoot, but it just didn't get as much detail out of the clouds as did the dSLR.

Two mornings:

Two evenings: