How to Use PhotoPills to Plan Golden Hour and Blue Hour Shots
As an Amazon Associate, ExifGrabber earns from qualifying purchases.
What Is PhotoPills and Why Do Photographers Love It?
PhotoPills is a photography planning app for iOS and Android that tells you exactly where and when the sun, moon, and Milky Way will be at any location on any date. It costs $10.99 as a one-time purchase with no subscription, and it has become an essential tool for landscape, travel, and astrophotographers who want to show up at the right place at the right time with a plan already in mind.
The app is packed with features, which makes it look intimidating at first. This guide focuses on the tools that matter most for golden hour and blue hour photography: the Sun Pill, the Planner, and the Augmented Reality view.
Golden Hour and Blue Hour: A Quick Refresher
Golden hour is the period shortly after sunrise and before sunset when the sun is low on the horizon and the light is warm, soft, and directional. It typically lasts 20 to 40 minutes depending on your latitude and the time of year.
Blue hour happens just before sunrise and just after sunset, when the sun is below the horizon but the sky takes on deep blue and purple tones. It is shorter than golden hour, usually around 20 minutes, and the light is cooler and more even.
Both of these windows are prized by photographers because the light quality is dramatically better than harsh midday sun. The challenge is that their timing changes every day and varies significantly by location. That is where PhotoPills comes in.
The Sun Pill: Your Starting Point
Open PhotoPills and tap the Sun pill. This is the simplest and most useful screen for golden hour planning.
It shows you a timeline for the current date and your current location with every light phase clearly marked: astronomical twilight, nautical twilight, civil twilight (blue hour), golden hour, and full daylight. You can see at a glance when golden hour starts and ends for both morning and evening.
Key information displayed:
The sun's current azimuth (compass direction) and elevation angle. Exact start and end times for golden hour and blue hour. Sunrise and sunset times. Total daylight hours.
Swipe left on the date to jump forward day by day, or tap the date to pick a specific one. This is useful for planning shoots days or weeks in advance. If you are traveling to a different location, tap the location pin and search for your destination to see the light schedule there.
The Planner: Visualizing Light on a Map
The Planner is the most powerful tool in PhotoPills and the one that takes the most time to learn. It overlays the sun's path on a 2D map, showing you exactly where the sun will rise, set, and travel across the sky for any location and date.
Basic Planner workflow
- Drop the pin on your shooting location. You can search for an address, scroll the map, or use your current GPS position.
- Set the date. Tap the date field at the top and choose the day you plan to shoot.
- Drag the time slider. A thin orange/yellow line on the map shows the sun's position at the selected time. Drag the slider through the day and watch the sun move across the map. The azimuth line shows you exactly where the sun will be relative to your position.
- Look for alignments. If you want the sun to set behind a specific landmark (a bridge, a mountain peak, a city skyline), adjust the date and time until the sun's azimuth line passes through that landmark.
Finding the perfect golden hour composition
Say you want to photograph a lighthouse with the golden hour sun directly behind it. Drop your pin where you plan to stand with your camera. Then scrub the time slider to golden hour and see where the sun's azimuth line falls. If it does not line up with the lighthouse, try different dates. The sun's rise and set positions shift throughout the year, so a composition that does not work in June might be perfect in September.
This is the real power of the Planner. You can figure out the exact date and time when the light will do what you want, all from your couch, weeks or months before the shoot.
Augmented Reality: Seeing the Future Light
The AR view is where PhotoPills feels like magic. Hold your phone up at your shooting location and the app overlays the sun's path (and moon and Milky Way paths) directly onto the real scene through your camera.
You can see a yellow arc showing the sun's trajectory across the sky for the entire day. An orange sun icon shows where the sun will be at any time you select. Horizon markers show exactly where the sun will rise and set.
How to use AR for golden hour:
- Stand at your planned shooting spot.
- Open the AR view and set the time to golden hour.
- Hold up your phone and look through it at the scene.
- You will see exactly where the sun will be during golden hour relative to the landscape in front of you. This tells you where the warm light will come from, where shadows will fall, and how the light will interact with your subject.
This eliminates guesswork. Instead of arriving at golden hour and hoping the light works, you already know it will because you previewed it.
Planning a Shoot Step by Step
Here is a practical workflow for planning a golden hour shoot at a new location:
1. Scout the location (remotely first). Use Google Maps satellite view or Google Earth to find potential compositions. Identify interesting foreground elements, leading lines, and backgrounds.
2. Check golden hour timing. Open the PhotoPills Sun Pill, set the location and date, and note when golden hour starts and ends. For a sunset shoot, plan to arrive at least 30 minutes before golden hour begins so you can set up and explore.
3. Check the sun's position. Switch to the Planner and see where the sun will be during golden hour. Will it be behind your subject (backlighting and silhouettes)? To the side (directional light with texture and depth)? Straight on (flat, even light)?
4. Plan for weather. PhotoPills does not predict cloud cover, so pair it with a weather app. Partly cloudy skies during golden hour often produce more dramatic results than clear skies because clouds catch and scatter the warm light.
5. Arrive early. Get to your location 30-45 minutes before the golden hour window. Set up your tripod, compose your shot, and use the AR view on-site to confirm the sun's path matches your plan.
6. Shoot through the entire window. Light changes rapidly during golden hour. Do not stop after your first few frames. The most interesting light often comes in the last five minutes before the sun drops below the horizon, and the transition into blue hour can be equally stunning.
Other PhotoPills Tools Worth Knowing
While the Sun Pill, Planner, and AR are the core tools for golden hour planning, several other features are worth exploring:
Moon Pill. Works exactly like the Sun Pill but for the moon. Essential if you want to combine golden hour with a rising full moon, which is one of the most spectacular combinations in landscape photography.
Exposure Calculator. Helps you calculate long exposure times when using ND filters. If you want to blur water or clouds during golden hour, enter your base exposure and filter strength to get the adjusted shutter speed.
Depth of Field Calculator. Calculates hyperfocal distance for your lens and aperture combination, which is critical for landscape shots where you want both foreground and background sharp.
Sun/Moon Alignment Finder. This specialized tool finds the exact dates when the sun or moon will align with a specific direction (compass bearing) from your location. If you know the bearing of a landmark from your shooting position, this tool tells you which dates the sun will rise or set right behind it.
After your shoot, use ExifGrabber to review the EXIF metadata from your golden hour images. Comparing your planned exposure settings with what you actually shot helps you calibrate your process for next time.
Tips for Better Golden Hour Photos
Shoot into the light. Backlighting during golden hour creates rim light, lens flare, and silhouettes. It is more dramatic and visually interesting than front-lit shots in most cases.
Use a lens hood. When shooting toward the sun, unwanted flare can reduce contrast. A lens hood cuts stray light without blocking the sun itself.
Bracket your exposures. The dynamic range during golden hour is often extreme, with a bright sky and dark foreground. Shoot bracketed exposures (one normal, one underexposed, one overexposed) and blend them later, or use a graduated ND filter in the field.
White balance matters. Auto white balance often "corrects" the warm golden hour tones, making your images look more neutral than the scene actually appeared. Try setting white balance to Daylight or Shade to preserve the warmth, or shoot RAW and adjust in post.
Do not pack up at sunset. Blue hour immediately follows golden hour and offers a completely different mood. The sky transitions from warm to cool, city lights begin to turn on, and the even, diffused light is perfect for architecture and cityscapes.
PhotoPills vs. Other Planning Apps
PhotoPills is not the only photography planning app available. The Photographer's Ephemeris (TPE) is a solid alternative with a cleaner interface, though it lacks PhotoPills' AR features. Sun Surveyor offers good AR sun tracking at a lower price. PlanIt! for Photographers includes 3D terrain modeling.
PhotoPills' combination of the Planner, AR, and its extensive set of calculators makes it the most complete single app for the job. The $10.99 price is a one-time purchase, which is hard to argue with given the depth of functionality.
Putting It Together
The difference between a photographer who consistently nails golden hour and one who shows up and hopes for the best usually comes down to planning. PhotoPills turns golden hour from a vague window of "sometime around sunset" into a precise, mappable, previewable event. You know exactly when the light will be warm, where it will come from, and how it will interact with your scene.
Start with the Sun Pill for quick timing checks, graduate to the Planner for composition scouting, and use the AR view when you are on location. Within a few sessions, the app will feel intuitive, and your golden hour hit rate will go up significantly.