Blue hour is not a weekend hobby you can “catch later.” The window moves with the season and with how far you are from the equator. Planning is just: choose the light, then subtract the walking time.
Season
In Budapest, December blue hour is short and early. Evening can be done after work; morning means a very dark start and a frozen river. June is the opposite: sunset after 20:00, a long blue, and you will be packing the tripod near 22:00. If you want reflections on the Danube, still air is more likely on a clear autumn evening than on a summer storm day. If you want snow on the parapet, you take the December slot and dress for it.
Nearer the poles (Reykjavik, Stockholm) summer twilight can last so long that “blue hour” blurs into a blue evening. In winter it is a brief bruise of colour around a low sun. The calculator will show you which kind of day you have.
Work backwards
- Enter the city and the date. Note evening blue-hour start and sunrise/sunset.
- Add 20–40 minutes before that to walk, set the tripod, and make a test frame. On a new rooftop, add more.
- Check the weather the afternoon of the shoot. Cancel on low grey. Go if the forecast is clear or high cloud.
- Stand in the composition at sunset (evening) or at morning blue-hour start (morning). Do not “quickly grab dinner” in the gap — that is how you miss it.
- Stay until the sky is darker than you think you need. The last usable blue is easy to leave too early.
One location, three frames
I still shoot the same viewpoint at the end of sunset, in the middle of the blue, and when the sky is almost black. It costs nothing and it teaches you faster than any article what “the minute” looks like in that street. Next time you will not need three; you will need the calculator and a watch.
City pages on this site (Budapest, Paris, London, and the rest) use the same engine as the homepage. Open the one for your trip, leave the date on the day you land, and put the morning start in your alarm.