Blue Hour
Here are a few images from my Monumental DC collection that show you what Blue Hour is and why it’s so special for photographers. (Click on the thumbnails to scroll through the set.)
Blue Hour happens twice a day: at dusk, when the last direct rays of sun have disappeared below the horizon and the sky turns a deep blue, and at dawn, when the sky turns from black to deep blue to light blue before the sun arrives.
Blue Hour is a special time for cityscape photographers, because:
* The sky’s color is a saturated blue.
*The blue of the sky complements the orange/yellow of artificial lights coloring building and monument exteriors. (Blue and orange are opposite each other on the color wheel, which makes them complementary.)
* People, buildings and other objects of interest can be seen even without being directly lit.
* With a decent camera and proper exposure, a photo during Blue Hour shows as much detail as a daytime shot in the same place, but the lighting is dramatically improved.
* And maybe most important, you’re often alone, especially at morning Blue Hour, so there’s less chance of random people wandering through your setup and photo-bombing your shot.
There is no formal definition of Blue Hour, but it’s usually defined as when the sun is minus 6 degrees to minus 4 degrees below the horizon. See this diagram from PhotoPills.* The nautical twilight** zone, from minus 6 to minus 12 degrees, also often has enough light for Blue Hour photos. But no matter what your definition is, at most latitudes blue hour is very short, ten to twenty minutes tops. (It’s shortest at the equator, longest at the North and South poles.)
It’s easy to see a Blue Hour shot once you know what you’re looking for. Look at this photo of the World War Two Memorial fountain on the National Mall.
I snagged this image on an October morning 29 minutes before sunrise. You can tell it’s from morning Blue Hour because of the deep blue in the sky and the faint pink starting to blush above the tree line on the right. That faint pink is quickly going to turn into a bright yellow as the sun climbs up the sky. That could make for another good but very different image, because once we get into Golden Hour, and especially after the sun is above the horizon, the dramatic lights shining up from the memorial’s floor will be bleached out.
Another Blue Hour plus is that the winds tend to be at their calmest. That makes for still waters and nice reflections. Here’s the DC War Memorial reflected in the Lincoln Reflecting Pool.
The contrast between the deep blue of the sky and the incandescent yellow hues inside the memorial also makes for a really nice shot. For two more examples of this color contrast, look back at the top of this blog post for the Capitol dome photos in the slideshow. The light coming from the dome’s interior takes on a beautiful honeyed glow against the Blue Hour sky outside.
Some Blue Hour photographic tips:
* Bring a sturdy tripod. It has to hold your camera rock-still during any shot. The fountain shot, for example, had a shutter speed of 8.5 seconds. The DC War Memorial reflecting shot took 30 full seconds to expose.
* Scout the location ahead of time, either in person or by looking at other photographers’ work.
* Show up early. Remember you have as little as ten minutes before you’re going to lose that gorgeous saturated blue in the sky. There’s no time to fool around with setup, especially since you’ll be working in near-dark conditions.
* Look behind you. It’s natural to shoot in the direction of where the sun has just set, or is about to appear. But there could be a compelling shot in the opposite direction.
For much more, plus some amazing inspirational images, study the PhotoPills Blue Hour guide. It’s a free download.
* PhotoPills is an app important for Blue Hour photographers because it tells you exactly where the sun and moon are going to be at any time on any day anywhere in the world – both the angle of elevation above or below the horizon, and the angle from north (azimuth). For example, if you were standing on the National Mall facing north, and the moon was just climbing over the dome of the U.S. Capitol directly to your right/east, the azimuth would be 90 degrees. If the moon was just setting over the Lincoln Memorial to your left/west, the azimuth would be 270 degrees.
** Nautical twilight got its name from the fact that there’s enough light for sailors to see the horizon and thus make navigational computations.