Blue Hour Photography Tips - A Simple Guide to Blue Hour Photography

Blue hour is the perfect opportunity to get creative in low light environments and you are able to create and capture different moods depending on the light sources you use. During blue hour you are also able to capture amazing blue, pink and purple colours in the sky.

Read on to learn how to get creative during blue hour.

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Blue Hour Photography Tips - A Simple Guide to Blue Hour Photography

Blue Hour

Blue hour refers to the period of time just before sunrise or right after sunset. Just as the sun sets most people tend to pack up their equipment and head home for the evening. But this can be an incredible opportunity to get creative in low light environments and capture different moods as it provides soft and diffused light with blue, pink and purple tones.

Light

Don't be fooled by the dark, your camera will pick up more light than your eyes do. A popular way of getting creative is to add a light source in the frame. When it's very dark the shadows makes it difficult for a person to stand out and draw attention to them which is where streetlights, a headlamp, a flashlight, a campfire or car headlights come in. Basically you can use whatever is available for you to illuminate the subject to draw most possible attention to and make the subject stand out more.

Tripod

Using a tripod for blue hour photography is a great option. It's already quite dark outside and since you are likely to use a slow shutter speed to make the image brighter the tripod is the ideal option because the slower the shutter speed is the more motion blur there is.

Another idea is to do long exposures. A long exposure during this time a day could be a moving car or another light source that is continuously moving. If you want to shoot long exposures but you don't own any ND filters then shooting at blue hour is the ideal time for you to shoot because it's already dark outside and the long exposure will brighten your image.This way you can capture images of waterfalls creating silky smooth looking water or an image of clouds streaking across the sky without the need of daylight or an ND filters. During the day hours or very bright places outside you won't be able to capture long exposures without ND filters as it will brighten your image too much.

Shooting at blue hour definitely makes you think outside the box and get creative.