A Quick Tip from Ossian - Shooting in the "Blue Hour"

Intro by Skip Cohen

It's another classic tip from Ossian and a reminder of another great time of day for incredible light - before sunrise. I love these short tips. Put them together and you've got a pretty serious set of ideas to help you raise the bar on the quality of your images, regardless of your specialty.

Ossian has a terrific trip coming up in November and there's still time to get on board and take advantage of the FOS (Friend of Skip's) discount of $1000/couple. Just click on the tab below to find out more.

Argentina "Vision and Vine" Tour

by Ossian Lindholm

So often beginning photographers and even seasoned professionals wait for the sun to capture the images they want most. We all know what I call golden light and a lot of you refer to as sweet light.  It's that magical warm light during sunrise and sunset that sets a landscape a glow.

Well, just before sunrise there's a different quality in the light, the blue hour.  I've captured some of my favorite images at this time of day.
 
The photograph above  was taken 45 minutes before sunrise.  It was an especially lucky morning, because the scene was lit by the light of a full moon.  The shadow of the rock was the result of the moonlight. 

I was at a location in Argentina called "Campo de Piedra Pomez."  It's a volcanic formation at high altitude, 11,400 feet in the Andes of the northwest.  It's was a cold morning with temperatures dropping well below freezing around 14F. I created the image with a thirty second exposure, shooting wide angle at f6.3, ISO 400 at 10mm. 

Fortunately I had two essentials pieces of gear with me, my tripod and a warm jacket!