A good rule of thumb in landscape photography is that lighting is king. I always teach that if you want good landscape design photos you want to be shooting when the light is good.
A good trick to making sure you get good light is that the best time for landscapes is "golden hour", which is the hour immediately after sunrise and before sunset. This is when you get the lovely low light, golden highlights and warm tones.
There is however another time of day that gets a lot less love and that's "Blue Hour", this is the hour before sunrise and after sunset. Blue Hour has the opposite look, which is colder colours, blue shadows and darker tones. This isn't to say blue Hour is worse at all, in fact you can capture wonderful mood at blue Hour with the right scenes and compositions.
These photos were taken at Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset perhaps 15 minutes after sunset. In this shoot there want much color during sunset due to clouds but the most gorgeous rich blue tones in the minutes following.
As much as it's worth setting out to shoot at sunset, I would always recommend sticking around for a few moments after, you never know if you might get some unique lighting!
