Blue-hour brilliance

Use Lightroom Classic’s masking function to create dramatic night-time cityscapes

- Sean McCormack

Blue hour is one of my favourite times to shoot, although the light doesn’t last long and the blue disappears quickly. Despite that, night-time in a city is still a great time to take photos and, with processing, you can boost the effect. Older cities tend to have more appeal, especially those which still use tungsten streetlights; more modern cities are more likely to have LED streetlights, to save money. Generally, the light is not as warm, meaning that you lose the beautiful blue/ yellow complementary colour scheme of blue hour.

While you can use high ISOs to capture night cityscapes handheld, it’s far better to keep the ISO as low as possible. If you like starburst effects on your light sources, you’ll also need to stop down your aperture to achieve that look. Both of these choices mean that you need longer exposure times – and often far longer than you can handhold. That means a tripod is a must for shooting cityscapes at night.