How to shoot blue hour photography

Blue hour is easy to miss because it happens after the obvious bit. Everyone gets the sunset shot and starts packing up, and the good part begins about ten minutes later.

15 August 20268 minute read

The sun goes down, everyone gets their sunset shot, and half the car park starts folding up tripods. Then the sky deepens, the artificial lights come on, and for a short while the two sit at almost exactly the same brightness. In the UK that's often somewhere between twenty and forty minutes after sunset (later in midsummer), and the same thing happens in reverse before sunrise. It's great light with hardly anyone around, simply because it turns up after the bit everyone came for.

Blue hour photography settings: a quick starting point

For a static scene on a tripod, this is where to start. The shutter speed is the only thing that should change during the session, and it'll keep getting longer for as long as you stand there.

Setting	Where to start
Support	Tripod
Aperture	Around f/8 to f/11
ISO	Base ISO where practical
White balance	Around 4000K
Focus	Set it while there's still light, then switch to manual if the scene is static
Timing	Roughly 20 to 40 minutes after sunset (later in midsummer), and the same before sunrise

Why blue hour works

It's all about balance. In daylight, building lights barely show up at all. An hour after sunset those same lights are bright points in a black sky, and no single exposure can hold both. Blue hour is the short window when the light left in the sky and the light coming out of the windows are close enough in brightness for one exposure to handle both, and the colours line up nicely too, with warm windows, streetlights and headlights against a cooling blue sky.

A Wizz Air airliner lifting its nose wheel on take-off at dusk with its landing lights on, and blurred airport buildings and lit blue hills behind. — Landing lights on take-off, the lights behind and the last of the blue, all in one exposure at 1/50s, f/5.6 and ISO 3200 on a 400mm. That's the balance blue hour gives you, and it doesn't last long, so it pays to be set up early.

What to shoot

Cities and harbours

The obvious one, and for good reason. Buildings, reflections and lights, with a sky behind them that's still got some colour in it rather than just black. A harbour gives you all of that twice over, as the water picks up the lights too.

Water

The light is already low, so you get long exposures without needing a strong ND filter on the front. That's handy if filters are what puts you off long exposures. If you'd rather choose the duration than take whatever the light gives you, the shutter speeds that do different things to water are worth knowing.

Airports

Apron lights, terminal glass and aircraft sitting on stands all look completely different once the daylight has gone. Most people at the fence pack up when the light goes, just as the place starts looking its best, so if you stay you'll come home with a very different set of shots from everyone who was standing next to you an hour earlier (and a much better choice of spots along the fence).

A Red Bull Corsair on the apron at dusk against a deep blue sky, its turning propeller blurred into a swirl by a long exposure. — A Corsair at IWM Duxford at blue hour, 8s at f/13 and ISO 64, from the Night Mission. Eight seconds is well past handheld, and it turns the propeller into a swirl against the blue sky.

Simpler landscapes

With no direct sun there aren't really any shadows, so shape and tone have to hold the shot together on their own. You don't need dramatic colour, and a landscape that looked messy in daylight will often simplify nicely once the light goes flat and blue.

Jagged mountain peaks in the Dolomites under a purple and blue sky, with cloud smoothed by a long exposure drifting between them. — 20s at f/8 and ISO 400 in the Dolomites, as blue hour turns to night. With no direct light the peaks are all shape and tone, and twenty seconds has smoothed the cloud drifting around them.

Settings

None of these are unusual settings. A few of them just stop being optional once the light goes, and getting one wrong costs more, as there's no second go at the twenty minutes.

Tripod

Once the exposures go past handheld, use one. Stabilisation very rarely turns a multi second exposure into a sharp shot of a building, and the ones that nearly work are the most annoying, as they look fine on the back of the camera and soft on a big screen. If something has to stay in the car, make it the second lens.

Aperture and ISO

f/8 to f/11 at base ISO for a static scene, with the shutter speed taking up the falling light. Most of the time that's the whole exposure decision. Longer focal lengths and anything that moves will push you to a higher ISO, and that's a fair trade, as a sharp shot with some noise is much better than a clean blurry one.

White balance

A fixed white balance around 4000K is a good place to start. It's more about consistency than accuracy, and it gives you a preview that isn't constantly trying to remove the blue you came out for. You can still adjust it later on a raw file, but it's much easier to judge the shot on the spot when the camera isn't fighting you over it.

Focus

Set focus while there's still enough light to do it comfortably, then switch to manual if nothing in the scene needs it to change. That stops autofocus hunting in the last ten minutes of good light, and those are exactly the ten minutes you can't afford to lose.

Stabilisation

If the camera is locked on a tripod, turn stabilisation off wherever your system expects you to. On a completely still camera it can go looking for movement, not find any, and add some of its own. It's behind a lot of soft tripod shots that get blamed on the wind.

Be ready before the light gets good

If the useful light lasts twenty minutes, arriving at sunset and spending fifteen of them deciding where to stand doesn't leave much. Get there earlier, find your composition in daylight, set the tripod up, and then spend the changing light making small exposure tweaks instead of wandering about with the camera in the bag.

Keep shooting through the transition

The exposure moves fast. A shot that was right near the start can be several stops under by the end, so if you set one exposure and leave it, you'll come home with three good shots and forty dark ones. Take something every few minutes and keep looking at the lights against the sky rather than just the histogram, as the best balance between the two might only last a minute and it's hard to judge on a small bright screen in the dark. It helps later too, as two shots taken eight minutes apart (one with the better sky, one with the better lights) blend far more convincingly than anything you can pull out of a single file.

Morning blue hour

The same light happens before sunrise, just the other way round. Everything gets easier as it goes, as more light keeps arriving rather than draining away, so a composition you were struggling with at the start is usually straightforward by the end. It's quieter too. If you shoot busy city spots, having the place to yourself is reason enough to set the alarm (the alarm being the only real downside of morning blue hour).

A dark Four Seasons A321 parked on an airport ramp before sunrise, with traffic cones around it and a pink and blue sky behind. — A Four Seasons A321 on the ramp before sunrise, 1/40s at f/8 and ISO 500. There's still plenty of colour in the sky behind it, and that's the reason to be out before the sun is.

Editing

Keep the blue. Warming the file right up undoes the reason you were out there at that hour, and it happens to a lot of blue hour shots somewhere between the card and the internet. Don't lift every dark area either, as blue hour really does have deep tones, and turning them all back into daylight leaves you with a flat grey shot that could have been taken any time of day. Watch the bright lights too, as once a streetlight clips there's very little detail left to recover.

Try staying twenty minutes longer

Next time you're out for sunset, don't pack up when the sun disappears. Give it another twenty minutes, which isn't much on top of the two hours you've probably spent getting there. The Night Mission on Kōlab is the place for the aviation results, and Moody Mornings is the same idea for landscape, if you can get up for it.

Shoot itAviation

Night

Aircraft once the sun has gone. Aprons, terminals, and long exposures on a tripod.

For the other end of the day, golden hour landscape photography covers the timing and the settings. And if you stay out past blue hour until the sky goes properly dark, that's where astrophotography starts.