I enjoy simple photography.

Sometimes you can see something so beautiful, so heart stirring and you did not have any means of capturing it and the opportunity has passed. Occasionally I have been fortunate and have just been able to capture that moment. Looking back on that photograph recalls all that was beautiful in those few minutes.

The first such moment was when we were driving from South Island to North Island, New Zealand following the coast road. On our left were hills eroded by time and just for a few moments those hills glowed, bathed in a glowing light, with a deep blue sky behind. It was a sight that could never have been part of an English landscape.

Then as we were travelling in Sweden late one autumn afternoon just before sunset it seemed as if the tops of the trees alongside the road were touched by soft fire. For a few miles I was spell bound and then it faded out and was gone. But that scene is etched in my mind for its beauty.

The third moment was the most striking. We were travelling in the south of France heading down towards the Mediterranean. We had been on the road for some time and I had drifted off to sleep in the back of the car. Suddenly something woke me up. And as I looked, it was if I had been transported to another place and time. The entire countryside was bathed in a soft warm golden light. The purplish shadows highlighted the beauty of the scene and its stillness.

Then alongside the car flying parallel to us following one of the long drain canals were four flamingos. They too were soft gold. It was so good to watch them turning their heads at the end of their long necks from side to side, as if looking for a breakfast spot. And then the flamingos were gone, the reeds were grey, and the light had changed . It was an ordinary bright South of France morning, just another day. But I can visit those moments any time I choose in my mind’s eye. Those golden moments have stretched into golden hours for me.

Were these times just my imagination? No! The golden hour comes twice a day. It is a time, not really a full hour, sometimes only a few moments, just after the sun has risen above the horizon, then at the end of the day at some time in the hour before it sets again, when the light changes. To capture that golden hour is to capture a time of beauty and mellow stillness.

Life is not easy for anyone. Do you have a store of good things in your heart and mind to fall back on in the rough times? Keep looking and begin to build a gallery of your own golden hours.