Light through the day

4th February 2013

The following exercise looks at light through the day. I chose a field which contained a gate which was about a mile from home. Although the composition of the picture was not my first choice, I thought this gave me a blank canvas for the sky and field and space to observe the shadows.

What I expected to happen was to track the light across the sky and keep the horizon low enough for any clouds to add interest for a skyscape. I had used the location for observing sunset and taken pictures from the other direction in the snow, so knew that I would catch shadows from the gate, although at sunrise the gate would be in shadow from trees in the field.

As I stood observing the first hour, I decided to change to a wide angle lens to capture the sun moving across the field. Having read the chapter on changing light by Hedgecoe in his book “The art of digital photography” (2009, Penguin, Hong Kong) and observed how he uses a sun and lens flare to add drama to action shots, I thought this exercise would give me the opportunity to observe lens flare and suns rays as it is something I had not tried.

I noticed that the early morning light was very blue in colour. I liked the photos which had sidelighting and shadows which add depth such as 10:45, and to some extent this is helped by a more interesting composition –i.e. having a dog walker in the scene. (Normally there are sheep or cows in the field but they had been moved, possibly due to the heavy snows.) When the sun was out, I could predict where the shadows would fall. In the late afternoon (14:45 1 hour before sunset) the lighting in the scene reminded me of a John Constable painting. I think this is to do with the diffused lighting through the clouds. It gave a different feel to the photo. It felt more restful than the dramatic, bright sun. I was expecting that when the sky became red and the light was reflected onto the grass, the pink grass would appear on the photo. Unfortunately, I did not capture this as it was just out of the frame.

		Light through the day February 2013 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Key:
1. F11 1/10 ISO 100 24mm 2/2/13 08:10
2. F11 1/10 ISO 100 24mm 2/2/13 08:21
3. F11 1/15 ISO 100 24mm 2/2/13 08:28
4. F16 1/45 ISO 100 10mm 2/2/13 09:48
5. F19 1/60 ISO 100 10mm 2/2/13 10:43
6. F16 1/90 ISO 100 10mm 2/2/13 11:45
7. F16 1/125 ISO 100 10mm 2/2/13 12:41
8. F16 1/25 ISO 100 10mm 2/2/13 13:48
9. F16 1/90 ISO 100 10mm 4/2/13 14:53
10. F16 1/30 ISO 100 10mm 4/2/13 15:46
11. F16 1/20 ISO 100 10mm 4/2/13 15:55
12. F16 2secs ISO100 10mm 4/2/13 17:10
13. F16 3secs ISO 100 24mm 4/2/13 17:15
14. F16 4secs ISO 100 24mm 4/2/13 17:21
15. F16 6secs ISO 100 24mm 4/2/13 17:24
16. F16 8secs ISO 100 24mm 4/2/13 17:28