Most photographers who struggle with golden hour are positioning themselves incorrectly. They face the sun directly, meter off the sky, and end up with a silhouette they did not plan for or a foreground that looks like a dark smudge.
What the light is actually doing at that time
Golden hour light is low, directional, and travels horizontally across a scene rather than downward. It wraps around objects at an angle. That quality is what creates texture and warmth, but it only works when your subject is positioned to catch it from the side or slightly behind.
Photographer Brigid Okafor spent three consecutive evenings at the same location testing this. On the first evening she shot facing west into the sun. On the second she turned 90 degrees so the light hit her subject from the left. On the third she positioned her subject with the sun behind them at about 20 degrees off-centre. The third approach produced the most usable frames by a wide margin.
The metering decision most people skip
Spot metering on the subject's lit side, rather than evaluative metering across the whole frame, is what keeps the warmth without clipping highlights. It is a small change that shifts the entire exposure logic of the shot.
Golden hour does not reward passive positioning. The light moves fast and the window is narrow, so arriving early enough to test angles before the quality peaks is not optional. It is the actual work.