“Blue Hour “blue hour” is among the most fascinating and emotional moments of the day to take photographs. I’ve snapped a number of my most memorable photos during blue hour far more than those I’ve captured during sunset or sunrise. What exactly is blue hour and how do you make your most out of this time? I’ll share my top tips and suggestions in the following paragraphs.
How Is Blue Hour?
Blue hour simply refers to the hour of the day between sunset and just after sunrise in which the air is an intense dark blue hue.
As with the well-known “golden hour,”” blue hour isn’t actually the same as an time period. Its exact length is dependent on the latitude of your location, the what time of the year you are in and weather conditions. It is important to note that the sun is in a good position to be below the line of sight, and the sky should not be awash with sunset or sunrise colors typically blue.
The blue hour lasts longer than most people believe. According to my experience, when it is clear, blue hour will include at the very the very minimum, nautical and civil Twilight, and also the twilight at the end of astronomical twilight too. This means that you can catch stars in the outskirts of blue hour. This gives an appearance to the Milky Way a bluish appearance:
In spite of its typical dusty brown color
Why do you want to take pictures during Blue Hour?
There are many reasons why blue hour is an ideal time for photography.
The first is that not many people snap photos during the blue hour as opposed to sunset and sunrise. This allows you to take unique, memorable photos and capture popular spots that have a low or no crowd.
Blue hour is a fantastic method to express certain feelings in your photos which might otherwise be difficult to take pictures of. Photos taken during blue hour are usually darker and bright. The blue color also conveys its own set of emotions, including serenity sadness peace, sadness, and more. These emotions are not suitable for every photograph but if the scene calls for blue tones and darkness It’s tough to beat the mood at this time of day.
Thirdly, on the similar lines, the blue hour makes your photos easier to take. Contrary to sunset and sunrise that typically have a broad spectrum of colors to shoot, pictures that are taken during blue hours are more boring. Even bright subjects such as the red rock and green trees structures get a blue tint when you are at the right time of the day. Personally, I’m hugely in favor of simplifying your image’s emotional meaning to achieve the most effective results – and the effect of the blue hour is an excellent approach to do this for you.
Fourth, there’s an important circumstance in which portions of your photograph aren’t able to change color in the blue hour when the photo is surrounded by additional sources of lighting. This is most likely to happen with artificial light coming from high-pressure sodium lamps or other lights with warm color temperatures. Simply put, your photograph in situations such as this (largely photographs of cityscapes) could have an amazing blue/orange color scheme which gives the photo a energy. But, you’ll have to be very careful when timing this; it’s usually an hour or so in which the sky and city lights are around the same brightness. This makes the most evenly exposed between the two.
There are a number of reasons why photography during blue hours is so fascinating. Below, I’ll share my top photo settings to capture blue-hour photography so that you don’t make mistakes in the technical area and affecting the image quality of your photograph.
Recommended Camera settings in order to take Blue Hour Photography
Despite the many benefits of photographing during the blue hour it is important to be aware in the settings of your camera when taking pictures. If a significant portion of your photo is of the same color which is, in this instance, blue – it may be difficult to choose the perfect exposure which doesn’t lose the details. In addition the lack or lack of lighting during the blue hours could require greater camera settings than what you’d normally choose to utilize.
The first step is to use tripods, which I believe is essential for all sunset and sunrise photography, and more dark conditions such as that of the blue hour. If you don’t have tripods for blue hour photography you’ll end up with blurry pictures due to poor shutter speeds, aperture and ISO.
In addition, an important element is to be able to focus correctly. In many cases, blue hours can be so dark that your autofocus device will not function correctly. If this happens then try to locate something bright that your camera to lock onto such as a well-lit structure or even the moon. If you’re trying to focus on something that is closer then the simplest solution could simply be to shine the subject with a flashlight. If that fails manually focusing is the best option. (Even if you are able to focus automatically it is possible to increase the size of your picture in live view so you can confirm that the camera is focused correctly.)
After focusing, the initial choice you’ll have to make is the aperture. Choose an aperture that results in the most optimal depth of field you want to image, as well as the clearest possible picture overall. Our guide to f-stops can help you if aren’t sure.
Then you need to make sure you set the ISO to the minimum value typically ISO 100. The aim is to get as much light possible through aperture and shutter speed, instead of enhancing your image by increasing the ISO. You’ll have better quality images this way.
In the end, you’ll need choose a shutter speed that will give you the correct exposure. Begin by following the camera’s meter and then look at the histogram to determine if something within the image is too exposed. Do not just glance to the general histogram but also the distinct histograms of each color channel. Blowing out one channel of color is nearly identical to blowing out the entire three.
Since blue hours are beautiful dark settings and dark environments, it’s possible that you’ll be able to max out the shutter speed of your camera to 30 seconds or whatever the camera’s limit could be. In this case, utilize an remote shutter release conjunction with the camera’s Bulb Mode to capture extended exposures. Also, if you’re shooting photos of the stars in blue hour, check here for our recommendations on Milky Way photography settings.
A final note on exposure: It’s not difficult to create dark shadows in your blue-hour photos. In such instances you could be enticed to opt for a more extended exposure that somewhat blasts highlights out in exchange for more bright shadow areas. However, this is usually not a good idea. Instead, it’s much simpler to recover shadows that are near black as opposed to overexposed highlights when the post processing (of course, this is assuming that you’re taking the photos in raw). If you are in a difficult situation you could create brackets the photographs and then create the HDR to increase detail in shadow and highlight. But regardless of what you decide to do, be sure that you get at minimum one image of the scene in which no crucial highlights are blowing out.
Conclusion
Blue hour photography needs specific camera settings and maintenance and attention, but it’s a small cost to enjoy such captivating photos and powerful emotions.
Then, at the end of the day blue hour lighting is only one tool available to you. The moods of blue hour don’t work for every photo or scene. When they are, they can be quite stunning indeed.
I hope you enjoy this post, and please let me know in the comments if have any queries about the blue hour photograph. It’s incredible how many photographers simply abandon a stunning scene at sunset, and then avoid blue hour altogether. We hope that you will not be one of those!
