The Blue Hour

This is the page I keep rewriting because the light keeps teaching me things.

Photographers call it the blue hour, but it isn't an hour. In Toronto in October, the window runs roughly 25 minutes: between 5:40 and 6:10 p.m., give or take three minutes depending on cloud cover. The sun drops below the horizon, the sky deepens into cobalt, and the city switches on its lights. For about eight of those minutes, ambient light and artificial light are in perfect balance. That's the shot.

What you see from 346 metres

Standing at the observation deck during the blue hour is different from any ground-level experience. The Financial District turns into a circuit board — every office window becomes a pixel of warm amber. The Gardiner Expressway draws a line of moving headlights east to west. Lake Ontario goes from steel grey to deep navy. And the sky overhead, if you look straight up through the glass, shifts from purple to black in real time.

Why sunset slots disappear first

The tower's timed-entry system means a sunset window is a finite resource. There are only so many 30-minute slots that overlap with golden hour, and everyone wants them. In summer, when sunset is past 9 p.m., the competition eases slightly because families with children book earlier. In October through March, sunset is between 5 and 7 p.m. — prime time for everyone — and those slots sell out days in advance.

My approach: book the slot that starts 40 minutes before sunset. You'll be through security and at the glass by the time the colour starts. If you book the slot that starts at sunset, you'll spend the best light waiting in the elevator queue.

The colour sequence

I've documented this dozens of times. In October, the sequence runs like this:

Sunset minus 20: Golden light on the east-facing buildings. The lake catches fire. This is the warm phase — shoot toward the east if you're on the deck.
Sunset: The horizon burns orange-red for two minutes, sometimes three. Shoot west. The sky has the most drama it'll have all day.
Sunset plus 5: Transition. The warm tones drain out. Blue starts creeping in from the zenith. City lights flicker on one building at a time.
Sunset plus 12–20: Full blue hour. Sky is deep cobalt, city is fully lit. This is the window. Shoot everything.

If clouds are thick on the western horizon, you lose the orange phase but you gain a longer, more even blue. Overcast blue hours are actually easier to shoot because the contrast range is narrower and you don't have to fight blown highlights in the sky.