Part 4 - Exercise 5

Light through the day

I was fortunate enough to be on holiday in Tuscany last week and was presented with a view which was perfect for this exercise.

This exercise involved choosing a scene and than taking photographs from the same point each hour - each with the same perspective, focal length etc

I found a position to shoot from which I knew I could repeat consistently. The scene contains moutainous hills, a house, sky and also some foreground detail - a fence.

I shot across a number of days when I was able, which meant that some time periods have multiple shots. I included all shots as even those photographs taken at the same time on different days display a fair degree of variety due to differences in atmospheric conditions.

5-6am

This was very much first light. I was surprised at how blue the light was - it may have been different again on a different morning. There is not enough light to add much interest here as the scene doesn't contain much definition of separation between the components of the scene.

6-7am

A few minutes later there was far more light, including a little more warmth. The light is still very diffused (there was some cloud), but there is a quality here which is fairly interesting.

A few minutes later again and the 'dawn light' is starting to dissipate and it's just simply 'daylight.' Still very diffused because of light cloud cover.

7-8am

Here the sun is playing more of a role. There is greater definition in the trees and mountains. The sun has risen directly to the left of the scene and so shadows are  being cast to the right.

And a few minutes later and the sun is even bolder and casting more directional shadows. There is far more depth here which is caused by the greater contrast from the strong light. The mountains in the background are also more hazy than the closer hills. The hills are also now considerably brighter than the foreground which is in shadow.

8-9am

In the 8-9am shots the forground grapevines and fence are starting to receive some light and therefore increase in interest.

On one day there was significant mist/cloud - at this hour it had cleared enough for some of the scene to be visible.

9-10am

In the above 2 shots the mist had cleared enough for the scene to have some interest. In the top photo the sunlight adds contrast, but in the lower one the light id diffused through cloud.

There is a lot of depth in this photograph - the distant mountains are faded due to the increasing haze, the foreground is receiving more light and therefore has contrast and detail, the middle section also has plenty of detail from the directional sunlight. This is one of my preferred shots.

10-11am

The sun is quite strong in this shot, there are clouds in the sky, enough haze to add depth to the distant mountains, but they still have depth from the deep shadows within them.

11-12pm

At this point of the day this sun is direct above and so shadows are reduced. This means that contrast and variation is lost. The photo starts to look a little flat and uninteresting.

The sun isn't so strong in the above photograph, the light is diffused and so the photograph takes on more subtlelty and charm.

12-1pm

However, when the light is diffused by cloud, there is actually more interest and subtlety

1-2pm

2-3pm

3-4pm

The sun is no shining from the right, and so the direction of the shadows is reversed. For reasons I can't explain, this doesn't seem to work as well. However, one interesting point here is that with the light coming from this direction the electricity cables that have previously cut across the scene now become almost invisible.

4-5pm

5-6pm

6-7pm

The light starts to become warm and rich at this time. It also has direction which gives the photograph character and depth. I think the above shot is my favourite.

7-8pm

The sun disappeared behind a mountain to my right and rear at about 7pm - the photographs become quite flat with very little light - particularly as there was no warm reflection from clouds on most evenings.

Overall it was surprising that dawn and sunset timed photos weren't more interesting. However, I think that's because when the sun was low the undulating terrain has stopped a lot of the light from reaching the ground and so rather than being bathed in warm light, it's bathed in shadow. Also, there was not much cloud cover to bounce orange or pink light created in the clouds back onto the ground.