Sometimes I see the light

Sometimes I see the light

Here’s one of the ideas that came from a short blog the other day. It’s about seeing the light, by which I mean recognising beautiful light, and then working out how to use it. For me, in my normal photographic mode, that means seeing when the studio lights are giving a particularly striking effect, and sometimes fine-tuning it. For a landscape photographer, it’s often about anticipation – and then it’s about patience.
Good light is partly a state of mind: there are days when the light level is low and the shadows seem empty, but I wonder if that’s just in my head… A grey day means low contrast, so that subtle things show in an image, though you may have to seek them out with the contrast slider when you process the pictures.



So good light isn’t the whole story: sometimes, there’s work to do in editing, and you will need to be able to recognise the potential, or you won’t shoot the image. That takes us into the territory that Ansel Adams staked out with the word ‘previsualisation’ – the ability to visualise the finished picture, and a mental plan for getting from the scene to the final print. To get to this, you will need to spend time blundering around processing, filters, effects and the rest, so that you can see a scene or person and decide that you need to expose carefully for the shadows, then increase contrast, convert to mono, and add colour toning.



I love the dark grey sky after a storm, when the sunshine makes the fresh-washed landscape sparkle even more because of the contrast with the dark sky – it’s worth pausing and maybe darkening it further with a some burning in, or even a levels adjustment layer and a mask. And in the studio, I have a lot of fun with low key work. Sometimes, good light is simply a matter of angle rather than precisely what softbox or reflector you use. (I get excellent mileage from a beauty dish of around twenty inches diameter.)



Rim lighting always looks great when you spot it… Beware, though – you may find that you blow the highlights if you don’t apply some exposure compensation, and that usually spoils the effect. Definitely shoot RAW and go from there, so that you can choose whether to have dead black or velvety shadows behind.



Catastrophe theory isn’t far away from spectacular light: you need to notice the difference between the effect of high noon sunlight on weathered metal and wood. and the results with a human face (disastrous selfie attached: testing an IR remote) and put together your mental little black book of good and bad combinations.