Our October challenge is Blue Hour Photography. Blue hour is a brief window of time just before sunrise or just after sunset, when the sun sits below the horizon and fill the sky with deep, blue tones.
The term “blue hour” is a bit of a misnomer. Optimum photography time, depending on your location, typically lasts less than 15 minutes.
Tips for Blue Hour Photography
- Arrive Early: Arrive at your location early so you have time to identify the best composition, set up your camera equipment and take test shots to check focus and dial in a starting exposure.
- Use a Tripod: Your exposure can be several seconds to minutes, so using a sturdy tripod is important.
- Shoot in RAW: Blue hour photos can require a fair amount of post processing. Shooting RAW will allow you the most flexibility when processing your image.
- Take Multiple Exposures: If your scene has a wide dynamic range, exposure range between highlights and shadows, shooting multiple exposures at different setting will allow your to blend the images in processing.
There are several apps and websites that can help planning your blue hours photo, such as . These PhotoPills and The Photographer’s Ephemeris. The weather app on your smartphone indicates sunset and sunrise times. A web search came up with this site - https://sunsetsunrisetime.com/golden-hour/tulsa.
Your image should fulfill the assignment topic as well as include elements of good visual design. Such as but not limited to use of space, layers, rule of thirds, rhythm, balance.
Submission:
- Submit up to five images by midnight October 21, 2026
- Post process to your liking, color or black & white, save as .jpg
- The long dimension of your image should be no more than 8 inches, resolution @ 150ppi
- Please keep file size to no more than 4 megs (to be kind to email clients)
- Include your name or initials at the beginning of the file name for each image
- Email image to Rick Ayre at rick.ayre@outlook.com
- Submission must include the following shot data for your image:
- Lens Focal Length of Shot
- Aperture Shot
- Shutter Speed
- ISO
We will meet at Bedford Camera and Video on October 24 at 2 p.m. to discuss and enjoy your photography. Oh, and pick the next challenge topic.