The Blue Hour

 

The blue hour comes from the French expression l’heure bleue, which refers to the period of twilight each morning and evening where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. The time is considered special because of the quality of the light at this time of day. For photographers, the light at this time of the day can produce some very stunning photographs. Yes, you can stick a blue filter on the front of your camera lens and take photographs at any time of the day hoping to create this lighting effect, but it is almost impossible to capture the quality of light which happens at the Blue Hour.

To capture this photograph I used a tripod because I had to have longer exposures than I would normally have during daylight hours. My camera does have image stabilisation but it won’t work for exposures that run into seconds. To get a well exposed photograph I took 5 exposures bracketed from 3 seconds through to 30 seconds. The 5 photographs were then combined together by software called Machinery HDR Effects to give me the photograph you see above.

If you are interested in taking Blue Hour photographs have a look at the Blue Hour Site which has Tips & Tricks, a handy Blue Hour Calculator and a tutorial on how to take Blue Hour photographs

 

Related articles

• Learning to See Light: Exploring Blue Hour (strobist.blogspot.com)
• Gorgeous Blue Hour Photos of a Small Japanese Village (mymodernmet.com)