{"id":188,"date":"2011-08-28T01:39:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-28T01:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/?p=188"},"modified":"2012-10-25T16:26:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T16:26:25","slug":"when-the-light-is-not-quite-what-you-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/when-the-light-is-not-quite-what-you-want\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Light is not quite what you want"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday evening, as\u00a0Hurricane Irene thrashed the coast of Florida,\u00a0the weather in\u00a0New England was clear and the warm glow of the setting sun raked across the land.\u00a0 I went\u00a0a short distance down the road to photograph the river.\u00a0\u00a0 But, to my surprise, the\u00a0light on the weeds and grasses was largely back-lit and unflattering.\u00a0 So I planned to return and try again Saturday morning, as the weather forecast called for overcast clouds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Soft light \/ overcast sky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As expected, the morning provided soft diffuse light and I snapped a few images.\u00a0 To get a bit of elevation above the river, I used two familiar tools.\u00a0 One, a portable telescoping ladder.\u00a0 Two, a tripod fully extended and raised far over my head.\u00a0 The latter requires a bit more shutter speed to compensate for the unstable camera perch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A bit later, after returning home, the sun was peeking through the clouds and I considered repeating my brief excursion in different light.\u00a0 But, in the end, I did not.<\/p>\n

As you can see in the image here, the soft light features no distinct shadows.\u00a0 This is not\u00a0automatically good or bad.\u00a0\u00a0A diffuse light avoids high contrast and specular reflections, but it can also reduce sense of \u00a0shape and depth.\u00a0 A moderate light from the side (side light) will wrap around a subject and\u00a0enhance the subject shape.\u00a0 But too much and the shadows may be too dark, loosing all details.<\/p>\n

When dealing with natural light (not electronic flash), sometimes we can anticipate the light we want.\u00a0 But sometimes, the light really is not doing what we expect or want.\u00a0 When that happens, sometimes the right thing to do is simply try again after the light has changed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday evening, as\u00a0Hurricane Irene thrashed the coast of Florida,\u00a0the weather in\u00a0New England was clear and the warm glow of the setting sun raked across the land.\u00a0 I went\u00a0a short distance down the road to photograph the river.\u00a0\u00a0 But, to my surprise, the\u00a0light on the weeds and grasses was largely back-lit and unflattering.\u00a0 So I planned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,19,20,22,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lighting","category-nature","category-photo","category-technique","category-tripod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}