# Blue hour photography tool



## Mice007 (Nov 23, 2008)

Hi! 

I'm working currently on a project of mine, creating a website to help photographers finding the right time at their current location to taking night (blue hour) photographs... 
I made the site available today and I hope I'll get some positive/negative feedback about it.
Please give a try to it if you have a minute and let me know here the findings 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





 I hope it will work good and will be a nice resource soon, I'm planning to add interesting articles, infos, and maybe some web2 features for photo sharing. 

address is: Blue Hour Calculator


Thanks


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## roadkill (Nov 23, 2008)

Why would I need a website to tell me when to shoot when I have intuitive and observational capabilities of my own.  I also know when night falls every night as well as the varying degrees of darkness.  The site seems to be your  idea of when I should shoot.


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## roadkill (Nov 23, 2008)

Welcome to the forum by the way.


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## KhronoS (Nov 23, 2008)

roadkill said:


> Why would I need a website to tell me when to shoot when I have intuitive and observational capabilities of my own.  I also know when night falls every night as well as the varying degrees of darkness.  The site seems to be your  idea of when I should shoot.


No one is telling you when to shoot. It's just an informational site.


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## Mice007 (Nov 23, 2008)

Good point! This site is a help for those who don't know the exact time when blue hour starts and needs some time to travel to a specific place to take photos.
A quick example when I've been in Dresden for one night only, I wanted to take blue hour photos of some places I visited daytime but did not know when exactly the sun will set and not left the Hotel in time so I missed it. 




roadkill said:


> Why would I need a website to tell me when to shoot when I have intuitive and observational capabilities of my own. I also know when night falls every night as well as the varying degrees of darkness. The site seems to be your idea of when I should shoot.


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## Mice007 (Nov 23, 2008)

Thanks 

I was in read only mode until today but finally i have subject 




roadkill said:


> Welcome to the forum by the way.


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## LaFoto (Nov 23, 2008)

I find that the "Blue Hour" is actually something that does not happen every day. It is on some rare occasions that the light situation is actually so that all the other wave lengths seem to disappear from sight, and only blue stays and the world turns visibly blue also to the naked eye. But this is not something that happens regularly. Not that I would know of ...


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## Mice007 (Nov 23, 2008)

It really depends on the actual weather. I'll try to build a database later about weather info for different locations but this will be a difficult thing... but i think a must for the correct service 




LaFoto said:


> I find that the "Blue Hour" is actually something that does not happen every day. It is on some rare occasions that the light situation is actually so that all the other wave lengths seem to disappear from sight, and only blue stays and the world turns visibly blue also to the naked eye. But this is not something that happens regularly. Not that I would know of ...


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## rubbertree (Nov 23, 2008)

that was pretty cool that it knew exactly where I was located and gave the times. 
I have an outdoor event I have to shoot next weekend and I see that indeed I will have some blue hour time in there, though the majority of it is later than that.
Yes, it does depend on the weather as well but this gives you an idea.


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## Stranger (Nov 23, 2008)

COngrats man! I guess weather was appropriate today. Saw this thread earlier and thought i'd keep an eye on the time and see if it was accurate.  Definitely looks pretty blue outside. I dont have my camera at school with me these last few days or else i'd grab a shot


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## mrodgers (Nov 23, 2008)

rubbertree said:


> that was pretty cool that it knew exactly where I was located and gave the times.


Doesn't know exactly where I am located, but it knows exactly where Embarq's server for my DSL service is.  So, if I wanted to drive a couple of hours to where the server is to take photos during the blue hour, I know when to leave my house.

I saw no way of putting a specific location on the map.  Perhaps because I'm using Firefox?  It locates me near Warren, Ohio, of which I am in Pennsylvania.  Warren, OH is where the server is for Embarq I am guessing.  Makes me laugh when people put those things in signatures that say, "Your IP is xxxxxxx and you are located in xxxxx", as if there is some magic to getting that info.  Pretty bad magic, it's always wrong.


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## pixeldawg (Nov 23, 2008)

I could see this as a useful tool if I was visiting a location and wanted to shoot "Golden" and "Blue" hour subjects. I imagine there's a bit of corrolation here with the local weather forecast in the newspaper- sunrise and sunset times.  .. I think it's a good idea though and thumbs-up for making this available to others.


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## LaFoto (Nov 24, 2008)

http://www.deltadelta.de/nmz/blauestunde.html

Some "Blue Hour" tables for you ... though they might all be in German?


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## goodoneian (Nov 24, 2008)

LaFoto said:


> http://www.deltadelta.de/nmz/blauestunde.html
> 
> Some "Blue Hour" tables for you ... though they might all be in German?



yeah, they're all in german. fortunately i took german for 2 years in high school


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## pm63 (Nov 24, 2008)

VERY well executed! The application told me right away when the blue hour starts and finishes in London without even having to select it from a list! However, it would be better to see it emphasised in a bigger font.

Have you thought about making something like this for golden hour? I think it would be much more useful. Great work still!


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## Johnboy2978 (Nov 24, 2008)

Isn't this basically the time of sunset?


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## Mice007 (Nov 24, 2008)

No, this occurs after sunset. Somewhere between civil and nautical twilight.



Johnboy2978 said:


> Isn't this basically the time of sunset?


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## Mice007 (Nov 24, 2008)

Fortunatelly this isn't magic but works in most cases. It depends on ISP a lot, if they using the same IP pool for a wide area then accuracy decreasses. For this calculation 100km (~60 miles) only makes a few minutes difference so no big deal.

I'm currently working on an easy to use manual location change function so this problem will be eliminated for visitors with really bad accuracy (eg: AOL users)





mrodgers said:


> Doesn't know exactly where I am located, but it knows exactly where Embarq's server for my DSL service is. So, if I wanted to drive a couple of hours to where the server is to take photos during the blue hour, I know when to leave my house.
> 
> I saw no way of putting a specific location on the map. Perhaps because I'm using Firefox? It locates me near Warren, Ohio, of which I am in Pennsylvania. Warren, OH is where the server is for Embarq I am guessing. Makes me laugh when people put those things in signatures that say, "Your IP is xxxxxxx and you are located in xxxxx", as if there is some magic to getting that info. Pretty bad magic, it's always wrong.


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## Mice007 (Nov 24, 2008)

Thanks guys the ideas and reports about the site, I really appreciate it and helps a lot.


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## Mice007 (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi Guys
I've made the first major update, and added some AJAX boxes to select country / city. It is still in beta status so there may be bugs and some issues but I hope it will work good. I'm also planning to add a box to select states to eliminate problems like same city names in different states in a country.


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## AlexColeman (Dec 13, 2008)

It is a good idea, just not accurate for me, and has a glitch where it woudlnt' show city, just kept showing listings for U.


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## Mice007 (Dec 14, 2008)

AlexColeman said:


> It is a good idea, just not accurate for me, and has a glitch where it woudlnt' show city, just kept showing listings for U.


 
Continue writing the name of your country and city and it should show it in the list, if you see it, click on it to complete.


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## Iron Flatline (Dec 14, 2008)

Hang on, when I grew up in Germany "Die Blaue Stunde" was something distinctly different... and definitely not for kids!


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## manaheim (May 3, 2009)

I went looking for just this kind of tool, and ironically I found reference to it here on TPF.   Thanks.  Site looks nice.


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## Torus34 (May 3, 2009)

Background music for the site could well be the oldie, 'Am I Blue?'


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## freeflydive (May 3, 2009)

Thanks for contributing to the forum...already used it twice during my travels to new cities abroad.

Cheers,
Majdi


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## Brian L (May 4, 2009)

I added this site to my bookmarks. Great information even thought some there might not always be a perfect blue sky its about getting out and taking photos. Being informed when blue hour is going to happen is great. 

Great job on the website.


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## Dwig (May 4, 2009)

I've found this site provides adequate information:

Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day

Its very easy for US locations. For other locations you need a map for lat. and lon. info and need to know the local time zone, both easily found with simple web searches.


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## manaheim (May 4, 2009)

Dwig said:


> I've found this site provides adequate information:
> 
> Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day
> 
> Its very easy for US locations. For other locations you need a map for lat. and lon. info and need to know the local time zone, both easily found with simple web searches.


 
That doesn't tell you the blue hour, though... though I assume thats a computation of some kind to get it?


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## Dwig (May 4, 2009)

manaheim said:


> That doesn't tell you the blue hour, though... though I assume thats a computation of some kind to get it?



It tells you sunset and end of civil twilight which are two good reference points. Weather and horizon elevation make way too much difference to worry with anything more "precise" in the way of calculations. You need to be ready to shoot before sunset and expect the good shooting to be over with somewhere around half way to 2/3rds of the way to the end of twilight.


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## Mice007 (Jan 9, 2010)

Hi all!

Just wanted to let you know that I made some major changes and improvements on the website a few weeks ago and I've also posted the first article about blue hour photography. I hope I'll have enough time to develop more usable and interesting features soon

Blue Hour | Night Photography


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## Mice007 (Jan 29, 2010)

I just want to let you guys know that I moved the site to a new URL for better search engine results..etc    so the site is know available at http://bluehoursite.com  The old URL will be valid for a while though. I'm also working on the second article about developing blue hour/night photos using Light room / RAW.


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