Golden Hour

“Golden Hour” are two words that mean a lot to photographers. This time of the day, just before the sun sets, is the hour natural light portrait photographers tend to gravitate towards. Actually no, we live for it! Entire wedding day timelines are sometimes scheduled around this golden hour, and engagement sessions are almost always done in this window of time. It  just doesn’t make any sense NOT to work around this perfect light. It really is incredible, and we don’t deny our obsession with it. Sometimes, on a non-wedding or engagement session evening, we’ll see a brilliant sunset sky and cringe because we don’t have anyone to photograph. It’s like we’re missing something. But then we realize how ridiculous that is. We’re not missing anything, it’s right there in front of us! Just witnessing such a beautiful sight is enough, and we should allow ourselves the opportunity to just be still, and enjoy it. Live in it, without feeling the need to photograph it.

But there’s another kind of Golden Hour for us. It’s the time of the day, especially this time of year, when things settle into place. When the day calms down for a moment and everyone slows to an unhurried pace. The Birds of a Feather offices are finishing up the day’s tasks, Betty begins to pack up her things as Maggie’s hubby comes home from a day of work. Maggie shuts down the computer and brews a pot of decaf coffee. Paw sometimes stops by to drop off Goldfish crackers or grapes to Sweet Cheeks. While dinner in the Stewart house is on the stove, the Mudd house dinner is being debated. When the weather is nice, we sit out on the front steps of Maggie’s house and watch Sweet Cheeks play in the tiny little front yard. Then everyone gets quiet, and the last golden rays of sun shine over the top of the houses in the neighboring cul-de-sac. No one is rushing, no one is working, everything is hushed. This is our own personal golden hour.

We wouldn’t change our career choice for the world, and we are thankful for a full year of weddings, but with our schedules being so full it’s not very often these little golden hours happen for us. Once, maybe twice a week we’re all in the same place for an hour or two at a time and hopefully we get to sit down to a dinner together as a family. So when we see these gorgeous sun sets on evenings when we’re not working, we’ll try our best not to feel like we’re missing an opportunity to shoot and instead we’ll take in the goodness of the quiet and the calm.

Last night was one of those nights. Sweet Cheeks was especially sweet and for just a couple of minutes, we grabbed one camera to snap a few shots of him. Then we put it away, and watched the sun go down with both eyes open.