I saw the Light Part 2

“Of course it’s all luck.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

In this article we will continue talking about using light as a creative tool with our compositions.? In the last article we discussed the direction of light.? Let’s now talk a bit about the quality of light.? The quality of light changes throughout the year and throughout the day.? Careful observation of the quality of light will help you to determine how you can use the changing quality of light to enhance your compositions.

Time of day, the height of the sun in the sky along with water particles (moisture), dust, pollutants and cloud cover all affect the quality of light.? We all have seen warm sunrises and sunsets with dazzling red, orange and yellow tones.? Beautiful “warm” sunrise and sunset tones are available all year around, but you should be aware of the seasonal variations in the light.

Let’s talk briefly about seasonal light starting with Winter light. In the Winter for your? hemisphere the earth is tilted away from the sun.? Sun rays travel further through the atmosphere in the Winter to reach your local geography (except around the equator).? Because the light rays travel further the hemisphere, you have the potential for opportunities with rich warm tones in your composition.? Generally the more stuff in the air and the longer distance the light rays travel the more intense the warm tones will be.

The distance the Summer light travels through the atmosphere is shorter since your hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, and at noon on a clear Summer day besides having “harsh” light with strong shadows giving us a very contrasty scene, we will see the light has a blue-ish tone.? Our eyes do a great job to adjust the “white balance” of the scene, but remember our cameras may not interpret the scene and correctly set the best white balance. For the most part auto white balance (AWB) on your camera works well in most situations.? ? If you create images with raw files, the white balance setting on your camera doesn’t matter as you can adjust the white balance in Lightroom or with your favorite editing tool.??

Fall and Spring of course sit between Winter and Summer.? The combination of the leaves and plants turning along with more dust and fall pollen in the is likely the reason the warm colors seem the most intense in the Fall.? Keep in mind the seasonal changes in the color of the light as you create your compositions.

We won’t review every time of the day throughout the seasons in the example images we will review,? so there will be some variation on the seasonal quality of light for the images that you might create.? Let’s look at a sunrise and sunset example since they have some similarity and occur during the golden hour of light.

The golden hour is the time before, during and after sunrise and sunset.? I would suggest looking online or using a mobile app like PhotoPills to get the exact times and duration of the golden hour for your location.? I live at approximately 42 degrees latitude and the golden hour roughly starts 30 minutes before sunrise/sunset and roughly ends 30 minutes after sunrise/sunset.? One of the key things to remember in photographing at any time of day including the golden hour is that light is constantly changing.? You might want to be ready to photograph an hour before and after sunrise/sunset as you might get some interesting light to enhance your composition.

The following are three sunset golden hour images I created at the Chicago Botanic Garden on June 15th 2013.? The general composition is the same in each image, the subject is back lit, and I was experimenting with an ND filter with the last two images.? I photograph in raw and edit the images to my aesthetic vision.? The most important element to notice is the changing quality of the light with these images.? Remember to stick around as the light show progresses.

The images were created during the golden hour on June 15th, 2013. The golden hour started at 7:47 PM CDT, with a sunset at 8:29 PM CDT. The golden hour ended at 8:50 PM CDT.

Created at 8:00 PM CDT - 48mm 1/80s f/16 ISO 100 - I leveled the horizon during the edit

Created at 8:25 PM CDT - 32mm 13s f/16 ISO 100? - I made a small crop on right and bottom sides during the development process.

8:38 PM CDT - 40mm 20s f/16 ISO 100 - I made a small crop on right and bottom sides during the editing process

You can see how the light is changing minute by minute and using the same subjects and composition, you can create many different moods.

Here are two sunrise compositions I created of a Lake Michigan sunrise on October 28th 2012.? The subject was back lit.? Once again you can see the changing mood of the light.? I edit the raw files to my like, but the intensity and saturation of the colors are very close to what I experience on the cool windy fall morning in October.

The images were created during the golden hour on October, 28th, 2012. The golden hour started at 7:02 AM CDT, with a sunrise at 7:20 AM CDT. The golden hour ended at 7:59 AM CDT.

Created at 7:17 AM CDT - 66mm 1/3s f/16 ISO 200 - I corrected the horizon during image development.

Created at 7:22 AM CDT - 66mm 1/3s f/16 ISO 200

Use the quality of light and the golden hour as a compositional tool in creating your images.? If you find a great composition you like, you may want to consider creating several similar compositions/frames during the golden hour to see how the changing quality of light changes the mood of your images.

In the next article we discuss the quality of light when photographing at other times of day.