How to photograph cityscapes during the blue hour…

Photographing during twilight can transform an ordinary subject into something beautiful and magical! Taking pictures during twilight, or the blue hour, as it’s often called, allows the photographer to create colorful story-telling imagery. Many photographers like to shoot during sunset, however my favorite time of day is after the golden hour has passed, and the blue hour begins. The sky takes on a deep rich color during twilight, and the light is balanced within the composition, but only for minutes. The beautiful blue sky will soon fade to black, so you’ll need to work quickly during twilight.
When photographing cityscapes, a small aperture and long exposure automatically creates wonderful little starbursts that sparkle from various points of light. These starbursts can add a glamorous quality to a nighttime scene. Stopping down (narrowing the aperture) creates longer exposures compared to a wide aperture of around f/5.6. A wide aperture may create wide circles of light around your light source compared to starbursts of light created by smaller apertures. You want your night scenes to sparkle!

Twilight is often called the blue hour for the reason that the sky becomes a vivid rich color as you can see in the photos above. You have only minutes to capture the blue hour before it fades to black. To capture the color, try changing your white balance to 4000K – 5000K. Point and shoot jpeg format cameras can be set for Tungsten for a beautiful blue sky. You can scroll through the various white balance settings in Live View to see the effect each one has on your image. Reality isn’t as critical compared to how color affects the mood, and depth of feeling in an image.

Come along on one of my workshops or seminars, I’ll be happy to show you how I photograph my favorite blue hour scenes!  http://www.debsandidge.com/workshops