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.