Living in San Francisco means that you are very frequently confronted with the fact that your home is a major tourist destination. There are just so many places where you find visitors from all over the world, stopping to take a picture of some gorgeous view.

The “City By the Bay” is located on a geologic fault line, which means that there is no shortage of scenic overlooks, dramatic views, and picturesque locations. That being said, Twin Peaks is one of my favorites. It offers a great vantage of the entire downtown San Francisco area, with a straight view down Market Street all the way to the famous Ferry Building. In the background, you can see the recently reinvigorated Bay Bridge, with all its dancing lights.

On this particularly cold evening, I sat on the side of the hill and waited for the sun to go down behind me and for all the other visitors to leave. Facing east towards downtown, my goal was to wait for the moment when all the lights within the city were illuminated, but the sky still had enough light to have the color I was looking for. Once the sun set below the horizon, the light changed at a dramatically fast pace, giving me precious-little time to capture the eight exposures that I would stitch together to create this image.

“Blue hour” is that brief but magical moment of twilight, either early in the dawn, or late in the dusk, when the sun is at a significant distance below the horizon and the residual, indirect sunlight takes on a predominantly blue hue. This VAST photo captures San Francisco at that special moment.