December Evenings in Rotterdam

The blue hours are the two magical moments of the day, just before sunrise and just after sunset. The light is ideal for taking dramatic city photos. These blue hours are there all year round, but in the middle of summer, they’re at rather inconvenient times. In December, on the other hand…

New Year’s Dive

I’ve often written about January mornings on this blog. It’s the time of year when the sun rises around 8:30 a.m., meaning the blue hour, that favorite part of the day for photographers, roughly coincides with the morning rush hour. So you don’t have to get out of bed very early to take beautiful photos. As a kind of New Year’s Dive, I often started the year with a few photo tours through awakening Rotterdam.

Earliest sunset

Those January mornings have a counterpart: the evenings of December. The earliest sunset is on December 12th; our star disappears below the horizon just after 4:30 PM. So, the blue hour is around five o’clock; technically it’s still afternoon, but one has to admit: it feels like evening. Streetlights come on, buildings and bridges are illuminated, and neon signs begin to glow. Lights are switched on in homes and offices, in shops and cafes. In a short time, the city changes character.

Magic

Why is that blue hour so magical? It’s the transition between day and night; the light changes by the minute. But unlike the middle of the night, there’s still so much light that details and structures remain visible in clouds and facades. And the sky isn’t pitch black, but deep blue or purple.

“Hour” is an overstatement, by the way; in reality, it’s more like thirty or forty minutes during which conditions are ideal for taking atmospheric cityscape photos. So you have to be quick.

Evening rush hour

And just as the blue hour on January mornings coincides with the morning rush hour, December evenings are enlivened by the evening rush hour. There’s a lot of traffic, and when car lights turn on and shutter speeds increase, the ideal conditions arise for photos with light trails and other motion effects. Trams and buses slide across the frame like colorful spots, cyclists and pedestrians become vague shadows, and cars draw lines in red and white.

Festive

December is also interesting because of the festive lighting. Christmas decorations, lights on facades and in trees, strings of lights on boats, shopping streets bathed in warm light, and squares bustling with people despite the cold. Okay, these days, Christmas lights are often installed at the end of October and stay up until March. And at the time of this blog post’s publication, mid-January, the Christmas tree in front of the station is still there. But there certainly is a “peak” in December. And many Christmassy features have disappeared by January, so indeed: December is the perfect time for festive, atmospheric photos.

Dinner

The early dusk also has a practical advantage: you can take a few beautiful photos before dinner. Grab your camera, take a stroll through the city center, or cross the bridge to the Southbank. And back home at six o’clock, frozen to the bone but with a memory card full of gems. Last December, I undertook several of those photo expeditions. And that resulted in a lovely collection of images, one of which even made it onto a Christmas/New Year’s card. Enough beautiful images, in any case, to dedicate this blog post to it.