When you live up north the amount of daylight gets shorter and shorter during the winter months. Remember, meteorological winter starts December 1st which will soon be here. One big advantage of winter over summer is the sun now stays much lower in the southern sky. I call November, December and January the eternal “golden hour”. During these months the light available for photography is special … essentially the golden hour all day long. The days are short, but the light is nice.

Sunday I experienced a perfect example of this effect. A Ross’s Goose has been hanging out at Forest Hill Cemetery. This rare bird for our migration region has mainly white plumage, which easily gets blown out by the sun while one takes images. For these first two photographs, the sun temporarily came out and the bird was in direct sunlight, but is while plumage did not get blown out. One final note … while the Ross’s Goose is about 1/3 smaller than its Canada Geese cousins, it seemed to be much more aggressive … chasing the Canada folks all over the place!

Eternal Golden Hour Direct Sunlight … middle of the day … Ross’s Goose

More images under cloudy conditions