The Blue Hour — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

The Blue Hour

The Blue Hour hap­pens twice a day at twi­light, when it’s not quite full day­light or dark of night. I often like this period much bet­ter than the Magic Hour that so many pho­tog­ra­phers dis­cuss. It’s that moment when you have cool light in the sky and warm lights from build­ings to cre­ate color con­trast. If I’m going to shoot some­thing for a sun­rise or sun­set photo, I think that most of my keep­ers hap­pen in the blue hour — when the sun is below the hori­zon line. Of course, that really hurts for sun­rise because it can start 45 min­utes before the actual sun­rise. Sucks for peo­ple like me who pre­fer to sleep late.

Aside from the part about get­ting out of bed for the pre-​dawn oppor­tu­nity, there’s only one thing about the blue hour that bugs me. You don’t get an hour. Some­one lied when they made up this name. Instead of call­ing it the blue hour, they should call it the blue moment. You may have a cou­ple of min­utes of this per­fect light and then it’s over. The sun keeps mov­ing and steal­ing away that cool glow on the horizon.

There are even apps on the iTunes Store to cal­cu­late the blue hour at your loca­tion (or the golden hour). I just don’t get that, though. You can eas­ily get sun­rise and sun­set times for free. You fig­ure the blue hour is before sun­rise and after sun­set. Do you really need an app for that? No, of course not. If you have a scene that you want to pho­to­graph at a beau­ti­ful time of day, you should be there before it gets beau­ti­ful and patiently wait. Click some shots, check your com­po­si­tion. Find things that you didn’t expect and shoot them as you wait for the light to be just perfect.

There have been many times when I’ve watched the light change from dull to absolutely per­fect in a moment, and then back to dull. My point is that you never know exactly when you’re going to have the best light, so plan on being there for all of it. If you’re shoot­ing a sun­set, don’t run away just because that big ball of fire crossed the hori­zon. There’s still beau­ti­ful light to come. Wait around and see what you get. As long as there’s light, there are oppor­tu­ni­ties to shoot. Enjoy those moments.