Sunday, June 26, 2011

Light play

flowers in a storm by Andrew de Souza
flowers in a storm, a photo by Andrew de Souza on Flickr.

It sounds stupid, but photography is all about light.

We see things all day and everyday and don't notice the subtle changes in light. Now, when you think back you can recall that say, at sunrise the light is orange, but when you're driving to work you probably don't really care.

Well with photography you have to learn to see more than what your brain is telling you. You need to have an unconscious idea of what pure white looks like and compare it to what the sun is doing.

It's fun once you get the hang of it. You start to notice shadows, contrast and different interplays of colours.

Unfortunately for me, this almost always happens when I don't have a camera, or, since the sun is moving, it only lasts for a few precious minutes.

Like this photo. It's not the best, I know but here's why it's decent any way.

I had to cover a story on our river here, which is 2.5 meters higher than normal.

As I was standing there getting some river shots, I noticed there was a small whole in the otherwise complete overcast sky.

We're talking like a few arc minutes at best here. I also noticed that it was going to pass right under the sun.

Looking around, I thought, "what will just pop with the bright sun against the dark sky?"

So I snapped a few of these lovely flowers.

Like I said, until you know to look for light, you'll never really see it. I bet that if you had just looked at this photo you might have thought it looks nice.

But now that you know the story, I bet you can actually imagine in your head exactly how the sun hit the flowers and how just those few minutes of interesting light that you might have otherwise ignored or not even "seen" can make for a captivating photo.

(In retrospect, I should have got a better angle, but no can do I suppose.)

Anyway, until next time!

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