London Blue Hour

Photographers all know about the Golden Hour, when the low angle of the sun transforms colours and provides richness and depth, but many don’t stay until after the sun sets (or well before it rises) to take advantage of that other transfixing time: the Blue Hour.  The Blue Hour is the period of twilight each morning and evening before full daylight and full darkness.  During the Blue Hour, the sky is a deep, dark cobalt blue that can make for magical images.  The Blue Hour is not a full hour of dark blue light, it usually only lasts 20-30 minutes, so it is important to be set up in advance to maximise your opportunities. As you watch the light fade after sunset, you will be able to see the twilight cross the sky and build almost without your noticing it. I typically shoot in Manual mode so that I can have complete control over my settings (especially if I am trying different motion blur effects with vehicles), but you can also use Aperture Priority  (the smaller your aperture the more likely you are to transform street lights into starbursts). Using a small aperture also helps prevent blowing out the highlghts–as the Blue Hour turns to night and your exposures get longer and longer, it is much harder to prevent street lights blowing out completely.

A tripod and cable release a essential for Blue Hour images as you will likely be shooting exposures of several seconds.  These sort of shots also lend themselves to wide-angles, and my favourite lens to use is the 12-24mm.

This image of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral was taken at ISO 200, 12 mm, f16 @ 2 seconds. I set my tripod up and waited until a red London bus passed by–I wanted to motion blur of lights and that transparent view of the vehicle moving through the scene. City images lend themselves to the Blue Hour–photographing the same scene later, in full darkness, just does not have the same intensity.

St. Paul’s Cathedral during Blue Hour

Here is the same scene taken an hour later when Blue Hour has passed into full darkness.  This image was taken at ISO160, 14mm, f16 @ 6 seconds. I prefer the Blue Hour image over this one, although I do like the fact that the lights are on in the trees here and I get the motion blur effect from the people walking along the street.  Whichever image your prefer, it is all about being in the right place and perhaps waiting just a little longer than you had planned.