2023 Mellenbye Adventure: Day 3—The Golden Hour
It is very hard for a photographer out and about to ignore the ‘golden hour’. As any photographer reading this will know, the golden hour is that more-or-less hour of golden sunlight that floods across the Earth as the sun begins to disappear below the horizon. I think it is actually more like about 40 minutes, but for some reason it is called the ‘golden hour’.
On Day 3 when the golden hour started to arrive, like most photographers would, I put my camera over my shoulder and drove off in the car to find something—anything really—to take pictures of as the golden rays of the sun caressed it.
This is the first golden hour picture I took on this day. At this stage the sun in only just starting to send out its golden rays. And look at the sky in the background with the gold starting to show lower to the ground.
The sun is falling fast now. Honestly, sometimes the golden hour only seems to last about 15 minutes.
There are a number of old vehicles around the Mellenbye property. Here are another couple that I managed to get shots of before the sun got too low.
Notice in the shot above that the sky is pink over blue. Unlike with the first picture where the sky was blue over gold. The sky goes through these amazing colour changes as the sun sinks. As a photographer you have to watch the sky. The colour can also change depending on whether you are facing east, west, north, or south.
As I was about to pack up for the day I spotted this. It was a full moon on 5th of June and there it was.
That moon looked about four times as big as that to me there at the time, but the camera shows it at its true size. Large rising moons are a trick of the eye and brain. The moon isn’t really any larger than normal. Our brain just makes us think it is. Goodness knows why this happens—there are lots of theories about this effect.
My last golden hour picture, as the last rays of the sun fall below the horizon, is of the Mellenbye Homestead. The building you can see through the gate is the homestead.
