Shooting at Blue Hour

“Blue hour” had to be named by a marketing executive, because it’s really more like “blue 30 minutes” (at best). This blue hour phenomenon happens around 15 to 20 minutes after the sun has already set and it lasts for around 30 minutes after that (the amount of time before it appears varies depending on where you’re shooting, but if you wait patiently, it will appear, much like Santa). It gets the “blue” part of its name because, instead of the sky turning black (like the usual night sky), the sky literally turns a rich, beautiful shade of blue for this 30-minute “hour.” This after-dark blue sky lets you keep shooting well after sunset, and can make for some spectacular images—especially helpful if you don’t have a nice cloud-filled sky. The good news is you don’t have to do anything special to shoot in blue hour light—you’ll use the same settings (I use something like f/11 at 100 ISO in aperture priority mode, where your camera will set the shutter speed for you automatically), and the same setup (tripod, cable release, etc.), and you won’t need any filters (no polarizer, no NDs, grads, etc.). So, it’s a simple shoot, under a beautiful blue night sky (provided, of course, that the sky isn’t so cloudy you can’t see the blue hour sky, but I think you already knew that). By the way, there’s often a shorter blue hour in the morning, right before sunrise, but it’s a very short time, and it goes away when you’re near sunrise, so most folks prefer the after-sunset blue hour.