blue hour

The sun is below the horizon but the sky is still lit, so ambient light is soft and cool and roughly balances the artificial light on an apron. That balance is why blue hour is the best time for a night ramp shot: the aircraft's own lights and the terminal floods read as bright without the sky going black behind them.

Nearby in Photography

• autofocus — Automatic focusing, driven by the camera's detection of contrast or phase differences in the scene.
• back-lit — Lit from behind, with the light source on the far side of the subject from the camera.
• bokeh — The visual quality of the out-of-focus parts of an image, as distinct from how much of it is out of focus.
• bracketing — Shooting the same frame at several exposures so at least one is right, or so they can be combined.