Golden Hour

Today I offer you the first of several awe-inspiring “golden hour” aerials captured by Ed Huber of Splitrock Productions last Friday for Adirondack Premier Properties. In this first photo below, his perfectly piloted eye-in-the-sky is hovering above the nearest meadow, looking east toward Rosslyn’s orchard and gardens, the barns and home, Lake Champlain, and Vermont’s Green Mountains.

Perhaps you can spy the ferry crossing from Charlotte to Essex? And, if your eyes are good, you might notice another large “vessel” afloat just north of our waterfront. Can you see it? Any idea what that is?

I mentioned at the top that this is the first of several golden hour photographs taken by Ed. I’ll share others in the coming days and weeks. For now I’d like to revisit last Friday’s dispatch about this photoshoot. 

In the cinematic panorama above, looking west-southwest beyond the barns, Justin [McGiver of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Adirondack Realty] shares… two interwoven visual narratives. There’s the spectacular sky erupting après golden hour. A dramatic denouement. And there’s the less apparent story of another storyteller… Barely discernible near center-left in the photograph is the silhouette of… Ed Huber, drone pilot, aerial photographer and videographer of Splitrock Productions. (Source: Anticipating & Après)

Although I have two more beyond-breathtaking images to share with you today, they, like the second image in this post, are taken just after golden hour — après golden hour (aka the gloaming) — which IMHO is often an even more dramatic time for architectural photography.

Am I tangling you up with all these time-of-day terms? Let’s start with the “golden hour”.

Golden hour. The photophilic interval between… daylight and sunset. The unique quality of radiance and luminosity… just before sunset when natural light is infused with gold and red hues. (Source: Anticipating & Après)

(NB: I’ve excerpted this quotation from Friday’s post to simplify and contextualize it with this evening’s update. But it’s worth noting that the golden hour also describes the similar transition in early morning.)

Now back to gloaming. Twilight tending toward night.

Perhaps this?

In the gloaming, oh, my darling!
When the lights are dim and low,
And the quiet shadows falling,
Softly come and softly go;

When the winds are sobbing faintly
With a gentle unknown woe…
— Meta Orred, “In the Gloaming”

Or this?

See how bricht, wi' guud a' bleezin',
Purple shaded shines the wast;
Cool the air, an' sweet an' pleasin',
Now the burnin' day is past.

Now, while the sun, fast sinkin',
Yellow tints yon eastern braes,
And the clachan bell is clinkin',
Let me sit, an', list'ning, gaze.
— William Livingston, “The Gloaming”

Sometimes an image unconceals with greater clarity than words. Which brings me back to après golden hour.

Or twilight.

Thank you, Ed Huber.

And bravo!