Just after sunrise and just before sunset, there’s a period often called the Golden Hour (or Magic Hour, depending on who you ask) when the light of the sun is just right—a little warmer, a little more diffuse and soft, the brightness of the sky pleasantly paralleling the intensity of earthbound bulbs—so that photos and videos will tend to look especially good.

That goodness is subjective, of course, and there are all sorts of qualities we might want in a photo or film that a Golden Hour shoot won’t provide. But in general, if you’re aiming for shots that just tend to look overall better, these moments can make that happen.

The oft-proposed opposite of the Golden Hour is the Blue Hour, a twilight moment that arrives just before or after the morning or evening Golden Hour, during which everything is cool-tinged, rather than warmth-infused, and thus the vibe tends to be a little moodier.

I would argue, though, that for quality-of-output purposes, shooting midday—when the sun is straight overhead—tends to be the best way to get the ‘worst’ photos, in the sense of awkward shadows, blown-out highlights, and other such aesthetic issues.

You can take an incredible photo no matter the time of day, but a casual portrait captured during Golden Hour has a built-in advantage because of the quality of the light, while the same taken at noon (or thereabouts) will have a natural disadvantage.

There can be an advantage to disadvantage, though.

Sometimes you want to make someone look menacing or ill, or want a photo to look ‘bad’ in the traditional sense, because that’s what makes it look ‘good’ according to your photographic or filmic goals.

Awkward light can also show you things that warmer, more diffuse and flattering light cannot.

There’s a moment each day in the winter months when the sun creeps through my living room window at exactly the right angle to illuminate the layer of dust on every piece of furniture and to outline every tiny bit of detritus that’s accumulated on my faux-hardwood floor with a thin, accusing shadow.

These atomized particles of debris absolutely glow for maybe thirty minutes every afternoon, which is ugly and scary and causes me to question both my eyesight and cleaning skills.

The upside of these perfectly ill-tilted rays is that I’m able to better see what I’m otherwise overlooking—all the flaws in my dusting and vacuuming technique clearly highlighted—and can adjust my technique accordingly, if I so choose.

It’s not fun having my imperfections made so glaringly obvious that I can’t possibly fail to see them. But such moments, when I can crisply perceive what’s working and not working, can be clarifying gifts (if uncomfortable ones).

As ever in such moments, the choice I must make is whether life’s dust and crumbs are acceptable byproducts of life as I choose to live it, or flaws that can and should be more directly addressed.

There’s no single correct answer to this question, but it’s useful to be conscious of these sorts of things either way, I think, even if I ultimately decide such issues are tradeoffs worth making.

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