Staithes on the North Yorkshire coast is one of those places I never seem to tire of visiting. It’s an incredibly picturesque village, tucked away among steep hills with colourful houses clustered around the harbour. On this particular evening the light earlier in the day had actually been beautiful, but that wasn’t what I had come here to photograph. Instead, I was waiting for that brief and often magical window of time known as the blue hour.
After a short climb up through the steep streets – Staithes is definitely not short of hills – I reached one of my favourite viewpoints overlooking the village. From here you get a wonderful view down over the rooftops and along the harbour as the river winds its way out to the sea. It’s a well-known viewpoint and certainly not a unique composition, but sometimes that doesn’t matter. What makes the photograph different is the conditions and the moment you capture it.
For this shoot I had brought the Fujifilm GFX50 along with a few lenses, although I suspected I would only end up using one of them. I started out experimenting with the wider 23mm lens, partly to include more of the village and partly because I knew I could crop later if needed. With a camera like the GFX50 there’s plenty of resolution to work with, and cropping to a 3:2 aspect ratio works well for things like calendar images.
As always with blue hour photography, a lot of the process is simply waiting. The composition can be set up well in advance, but the real magic happens when the balance between artificial light and the fading daylight begins to align. Too early and the sky is still too bright. Too late and the street lights dominate the scene. The key moment is when the glow from the houses and street lamps matches the remaining blue light in the sky.
Standing there overlooking the harbour, I watched as the lights gradually began to appear in the village. A few street lamps flickered on, followed by some windows lighting up across the buildings. It was a fairly quiet evening, and I suspect many of the houses were either empty or people were still out, so there weren’t quite as many lights as I might have hoped for. Still, the scene was slowly coming together.
Once exposures started creeping towards the 30 second mark at around f/9, I knew we were getting close to the ideal moment. The sky had that deep blue tone that gives blue hour its name, and the warm lights from the village began to glow against the cool colours of the evening.
After taking the main shot from the viewpoint, I decided to try a couple of variations before the light disappeared completely. Switching lenses, I experimented with a tighter composition focusing on a small boat, some nearby houses and a line of street lamps. Working quickly now as the light faded into night, I managed to capture what I think turned out to be a really pleasing final image.
And just like that, the blue hour was over. It’s a surprisingly short window, but that’s part of what makes it so special. You rarely come away with lots of images from a blue hour shoot, but if you manage to capture two or three photographs you’re happy with, that’s usually more than enough.
Staithes is one of those places I’ll keep returning to again and again. The viewpoint may stay the same, but every visit brings slightly different light, different weather and a different photograph waiting to be taken.
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