Andrea’s Blue Hour Beach Shoot

Typically you want to shoot when there is good light. What most people call golden hour is that special time before the sun sets overs the horizon. You get the perfect light that makes everything glow and have a special kind of color that you don’t see through out the day.

So when I told Andrea that I wanted to shoot after that beautiful light goes away, she had a bit of concern to my madness. But after I explained that blue hour can be just as beautiful as golden hour, she was willing to spend some hours with me trying it out.

We arrived at the beach and made the short walk to the water. She changed into her working out gear and she started posing. The sun had just dipped under the horizon so we had 15 more minutes before the light I was after showed up.

She quickly changed into her blue bikini and we began to take photos. Trying to balance the flash with the ambient light proved to be very difficult. And with no time to waste, I had to adjust the flash quick every time we moved angles.

We tried to do some posed shots but ended up trying to just get some candid shots instead. The only issue is that she had to move a lot slower than usual because I had to really push the shutter speed down to some low numbers. But we got in the rhythm and began to get some really cool shots.

Towards the end of the shoot, I turned off the flash and just shot her against the faintly dimmed sky. Even though she was in shadow for some shots, I think they still came out pretty good.

We were both extremely satisfied with the results and we both had a ton of fun.

I learned how to shot in really dark scenarios with the flash today and took some great images with and without the flash. Today was a very productive day.