By Scott Shephard

I had known about the so-called "golden hour," which is the time before sunset and after sunrise when the light is warm and therefore flattering to faces. But I only recently heard that there is a term for the time before and after the golden hour. It called the blue hour.

This photo kind of illustrates what the term means in that you can see the dark blue Seattle sky. To be honest, I wasn't really thinking about what the sky would look like when I looked up from underneath the famous Space Needle in Seattle, Washington. But the  sky became an essential compositional element in the photo given that it helps frame and accentuate the top of the needle. And I couldn't have asked for better colors. The blue and yellow are primary colors and are almost complimentary.

When it comes to architecture, I am partial to black and white treatments, in part because I think the presence of color sometimes puts less emphasis on the lines, shapes and textures that are inherent in the design. But in the case of this photo, color helps you see all of these better.

And all of this started with a tourist and his camera wandering around Seattle during an all-to-brief blue hour in October, 2008.

Canon 5D 1/60s f/1.4 ISO400 50mm

Here's the black and white version of the same photo