Exercise 4.1 Daylight

Brief

Taking the photography of Mann, Atget or Schmidt or a photographer of your own choosing as a starting point, shoot a number of photographs exploring the quality of natural light. The exercise should be done in manual mode and the important thing is to observe the light, not just photograph it. In our learning log, and using the descriptions above as your starting point, try to describe the quality of the light in your photographs in your own words.

I started by exploring the following photographers:

Sally Mann:
Born 1951 is an American photographer whose haunting images, often in black and white, are reminiscent of early Victorian photographs. The use of her own children in her series “Immediate family”, together with subjects including death and desolation have made her a well known, if sometimes infamous and controversial photographer.
“I am deeply romantic. My works are not sentimental, but romantic and very, very tough, too.” (Sally Mann 2010).
I find Sally Manns images haunting but not always romantic. They are sometimes mysterious and thought provoking and, in her series “Southern Landscapes”, have a timeless feel about them. She uses the quality of natural light, camera aberrations and faults to give her images a feel that is often ghostly, as if they have been found in the dusty attic of an old house. Mist coming off water, pale watery sunshine, deep shadows and overblown highlights are used to illicit deeper emotion and show the landscapes in an almost unnatural state.
Having spent time working for the police, they reminded me of crime scene photos and in particular I found Sally Manns “Southern Landscapes” similar to crime scene images produced from glass plates in the 1940s. They too included aberrations and faults Mann purposely introduced into her images.

Fig.1 Sally Mann (nd) “Southern Landscapes”

Fig.2 Sally Mann (nd) “Southern Landscapes”

Fig.3 Sally Mann (nd) “Southern Landscapes”

Michael Schmidt:
Born 1945 in East Berlin, Schmidt’s approach seems to be the opposite of Sally Mann’s in that he used flat mid day light to ensure that the viewer would not be distracted by deep shadows or other mood effects. He wanted to portray his subjects objectively.
“This means that the viewer is able to form an objective opinion about the image from a neutral standpoint independent of his subjective colour perception. He is thus not emotionally distracted”. (Michael Schmidt: “Thoughts About My Way of Working” 1979).
His book Natur (Nature) (1987–1997) captured very similar viewpoints of the German landscape to those of Sally Mann’s American South, but the differences between the images are great.
Schmidt’s images use flat stark light with little shadow or natural light effects which lessen the emotional impact of the image but heightens the objectivity.

Fig.4 Michael Schmidt Natur (Nature) (1987–1997)

Fig.5 Michael Schmidt Natur (Nature) (1987–1997)

Fig.6 Michael Schmidt Natur (Nature) (1987–1997)

Schmidt preferred to work with natural diffused light and in black and white to ensure viewer objectivity.

Eugene Atget:
Born in 1857 in France he worked to produce images that were objective in a similar way to Michael Schmidt. This may have been due, in part, to his early career as a photographer, taking pictures of documents and producing studies for artists and architects which all relied on objective qualities. As his work progressed, he started to use different natural lighting conditions to create mood and illicit emotion.
Photographer Man Ray, whose studio was in the same street as Atget’s, came across his photographs around 1923 and became a fan. Man Ray, famous for his surrealistic images, would include some of Atget’s photographs in his publication La revolution Surréaliste in 1926. But it was Man Ray’s assistant Berenice Abbott who raised his profile after his death
“In her rich introduction to the book The World of Atget (1964) she recalled ‘Their impact was immediate and tremendous. There was a sudden flash of recognition – the shock of realism unadorned. The subjects were not sensational, but nevertheless shocking in their very familiarity”. (Campany, D (2009) “Eugène Atget’s Intelligent Documents”)

Fig.7 Eugene Atget (nd)

Fig.8 Eugene Atget (nd)

Fig.9 Eugene Atget (nd)

It seems that the photographers above were, at times, working at different ends of the scale as far as their use of light and conditions were concerned. Either moody and thought provoking or objective and instructional.

Fig.10

After looking at different aspects of light, it seems that there are four main characteristics that make up the quality of light. They are often used in varying degrees to illicit emotion and or enhance mood in images.
1. Quantity or intensity
The quantity or intensity is certainly apparent when taking a photo. Too much light and the image may be overexposed, too little and the it may be underexposed. The settings on the camera such as shutter speed, ISO or items such as filters may help to get the correct exposure under these conditions but problem becomes exacerbated when there are very bright and or very dark areas in the same scene.
2. Direction
The direction of the light can enhance shape and form and expose texture, although this can greatly affected the other aspects of light.
3. Soft/Hard
Soft light is often a light source that is being diffused in some way, either naturally by something like cloud cover, by using a diffuser such as a flash with a white umbrella, or by bouncing light off a surface.
Soft light tends to smooth out shadows and highlights, and can add a romantic feel. It can also cause images to look flat and lack any shape or form; hard light can give strong shadows and highlights and, depending on the intensity, a feeling of drama.
4. Colour
Looking at the Kelvin scale for colour temperature (Fig.10), there is a range from 1000k (warm) to 10,000k (cool).
Fig.10 gives descriptions for the ranges sold by a company making bulbs and lighting equipment. Although the descriptions are meant for internal artificial lighting conditions, I thought they could equally describe natural light conditions.

For natural light there is only one initial source, the sun, which we can assume always emits the same colour of light. However, the colour that reaches the camera depends on two subsequent factors: how the sunlight has been affected by the atmosphere as it travels into our scene and how that light is reflected towards the subject and finally into the camera lens. As sunlight passes through the earth’s atmosphere the air particles scatter it. This effect varies with wavelength, with the blue light being scattered more than the red. The atmosphere therefore changes the colour of the sunlight reaching the scene. The more atmosphere the sunlight has to pass through, the greater this effect. At dawn or dusk the sun is at its lowest and the light must pass through the most atmosphere. So the effect on the colour is at its greatest, with the most blue light being lost giving us orange and red sunrises and sunsets. Conversely, at midday, the sun is overhead, the light passes through the least amount of atmosphere, the effect is at its weakest and the sunlight reaching us is close to its original white colour.

Fig.11

Colour temperature can also be used to illicit feelings of warmth and intimacy or cold and invigorating.

All the images from the photographers I examined at the beginning of this exercise were in black and white. So the mood, or lack of it, must have been brought about by one or more of the other characteristics rather than by the colour temperature.
Another aspect that can affect the quality of light include the differences in weather. Fog, in particular, can give a soft, sometimes eerie feeling to images, again, subject to other characteristics present.

In selecting a stone wall as my subject I hope to be able to detect some or all of the characteristics above, across a variety of images taken at different times of the day, both in direct sunlight, shade, with and without cloud cover.
Images taken in the shade are more blue (Img.1); images taken in sunlight are warmer (Img.2).

Img.1

Img.2

In sunlight the images taken in the morning (Img.3) and evening (Img.4) are warmer than those taken in the middle of the day (Img.5).

Img.3

Img.4

Img.5

There is more texture and form in the images taken when the sunlight was coming from a lower angle (Img. 6).

Img 6.

The images taken in the shade are flat with little or no shape or form (Img.7).

Img.7

These images have been converted to black and white which has emphasised form in Image.6 and flatness in Image.7.

Contact sheet

Contact sheet 1. Images 34 – 37 taken mid morning. Images 38 – 46 taken mid day. Images 47 – 49 taken mid afternoon. Images 50 – 58 taken late afternoon.

Further shots of trees and the countryside taken during clear skies at different times of the day produced similar results in relation to shadows and highlights and colour temperature; warmer light in the late afternoon, and far more contrast at midday.
In the first set of images I preferred the late afternoon version (Img.8), as it showed the dappled soft warm light coming through the trees and leaves. This effect was not as strong or appealing in the version taken at midday, more objective (Img.9).
In the second set I preferred the version taken at midday (Img.11). It had far more interest with deep shadows and highlights, leading you down the path. The late afternoon version looks a bit washed out with very little interest other than warmer tones.

: Img.8 Late afternoon

: Img.9 Midday

: Img.10 Late afternoon direct sun

: Img. 1 1Midday direct sun

Contact sheet

Contact sheet 2. Images 61-67 taken midday. Image 69 – 74 taken late afternoon

I wanted to take some images of the same scene on a bright but overcast day to see if the images would be more objective.

Img.12 14:00hrs Bright Overcast sky

Img.13 14:00hrs Bright Overcast sky

Img.14 14:00hrs Bright Overcast sky

The light is soft with the sun diffused through the clouds, resulting in images that are quite flat but with enough shadow and highlight to give some shape and form; they are more objective in the style of Michael Schmidt.

: Img.12 14:00hrs Bright Overcast sky

: Img.10 Late afternoon direct sun

: Img. 1 1Midday direct sun

I converted Img.12 to black and white to further objectify the image.

Img. 12 B&W

Whilst taking some shots of a Christmas rowing race, I realised I was being distracted by the vibrancy of colours. The day was bright but completely overcast with a diffused light creating vibrancy to colour with a softness coming from the lack of harsh shadows and highlights.