Planning light for New York, United States
Sunrise
What is LightWindow
Plan your shoot around the light, before you leave the house
LightWindow tells you when the good light happens and where it comes from. Pick a city and it lays out the day in order: morning blue hour, sunrise, golden hour, solar noon, then the same windows in reverse as the sun goes down. Every time is shown in the local clock, so you know exactly when to be in position.
The cards above also carry a compass direction for sunrise, sunset and each golden and blue hour window. That tells you which way the light will fall, so you can scout an angle or a backdrop ahead of time instead of guessing once you arrive.
Tools for New York
Shooting the light in New York
New York sits at 40.7°N, which gives it a real seasonal swing: roughly fifteen hours of daylight at the June solstice and just over nine in late December. In winter the sun never climbs much past 26°, so even midday light stays directional - hard on schedules, generous to photographers.
The famous quirk is the street grid. Manhattan’s grid is rotated about 29° off true east-west, so twice a year - late May and mid-July - the setting sun lines up dead-on with the cross streets. That’s Manhattanhenge, and the sun-path tool on this site shows exactly how the alignment builds in the days before.
Where photographers go
DUMBO & Brooklyn Bridge Park
Sunrise frontlights the lower Manhattan skyline across the East River; at sunset the same view turns to silhouette against the colored sky.
Top of the Rock
The classic evening deck: golden hour rakes across Midtown, then the Empire State Building holds the blue hour frame.
Gantry Plaza State Park
Long Island City’s piers face Midtown across the river - sunset drops behind the skyline, so arrive early for the warm frontlit phase from the east bank in the morning.
Cross streets in Midtown
For Manhattanhenge, 14th, 23rd, 34th and 42nd give long, clear sightlines west.
