Blue Hour North, Top of the Rock – New York, New York

I often mentioned that blue hour is my favorite for urban landscapes, so it made sense to stay at the Top of the Rock until nighttime. I arrived around 7pm for golden hour, sunset, blue hour, and night and left around 9pm. I probably stayed longer than most, but I’m an enthusiastic photographer and wanted to maximize my stay.

We start with a northern view with a deep blue sky and a sliver of remaining sunset color. The dark rectangle in the middle is the sparsely lit Central Park. And while this isn’t the densest view of skyscrapers, it still looks impressive with lights to the horizon.

The Top of the Rock doesn’t allow tripods, but image stabilization was more than enough for high-quality pictures. I opened my aperture to f4.5 and managed ISO 400 with a 1/6s shutter. However, I did underexpose by more than three stops and brightened the image with post-processing. The low-noise GFX produced an outstanding picture.

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