A day in the light…

Part 4 of the course is entitled The Languages of Light and photographs are to be taken in manual mode.

I had first thought that I would struggle with manual mode because I had never used it before, my previous preference being aperture priority. However, I had ‘messed up’ some shots working in aperture priority because I hadn’t checked the shutter speed. On occasion, I had wanted to freeze motion but ended up with blurred images.

Manual mode though, has been a delightful surprise because it forces me to think, each and every time, about each of my camera settings. Although this slows me down, I do believe it’s a good thing!

Waking unusually early one morning (4.30am), I decided to practice shooting in manual mode from daybreak to dusk in order to prepare for Exercise 4.1: Daylight, which requires the student to “shoot a number of photographs exploring the quality of natural light.” At this point, I hadn’t yet looked up the suggested photographers: Mann, Atget or Schmidt, who each have different ideas about light in photography (more on these later).

In this post, I am not pulling out any particular photographs to discuss, I shall save them for the exercise. I simply post up the contact sheets which record the different shutter speeds and apertures that I selected, together with my handwritten notes.

Whilst undertaking these exercises, I tried to think of as many descriptive terms as possible to describe the various qualities of light (in general).

There are various ways to describe light:-

• Quality
• Colour (hue, vibrancy, saturation, luminance)
• Tone
• Direction
• Temperature
• Intensity

In terms of quality, these are the terms I came up with during the course of the day:-

• Soft
• Hard
• Harsh
• Direct
• Diffused
• Mottled
• Dispersed
• Reflected
• Dappled
• Shadows
• Absorbed
• Refracted
• Sparkling
• Glaring
• Ambient
• Golden
• Cold
• Warm
• Mysterious
• Clear
• Hazy

Bearing in mind that I have, as yet, read very little about light, I am trying to develop my own vocabulary before it is influenced by photographers I am about to read about. Therefore, I will not edit this post, although I may add further notes as time goes by.