I wanted to go to the shore and take some nice exposures of the light that is during the so called «blue hour», which is the time right before it gets dark after sunset.

I chose to go to the peninsula Bygdøy that is in the south of Oslo. Here I had good sight towards the light industrialised area Fornebu, with the headquarter of among Telenor.

It was clear weather and almost not wind. There were just a few waves on the fjord. If it had been more waves the water would have ended up being more diffuse. I placed the camera on a tripod in the shore of the water, as I wanted the rocks there in the foreground. I used the widest angle of my Canon EF 24-70mm F2.8L lens, 24mm, and set the aperture for f22. This ensured that I required a lot of light to make the exposure work. As the manual exposure settings on my Canon 1D Mark IV does not support more than 30 seconds shutter, I needed to use the bulb menu. I already had to use a remote. I now also have to time the shutter speed. I needed a shutter speed of about 60-80 seconds. The camera has a timer on its upper display, but it has no light (for that long) and I do not want to light the camera with a flashlight adding unnatural light to the shot. Therefor I use my cell phone.

I took a few different shots in different angles and soon discovered that taking photos in the opposite direction of the sun required far longer exposure times, obvious. I did some experiment with 4+ minutes and lighted the foreground with a flashlight. A project for another time.

I am happy with how the photos came out. After a little touchup in Adobe Lightroom they were ready to go. I always shoot in RAW, so some editing is always needed.