Exercise 4.1 Daylight

Exercise 4.1 Daylight

Brief:

“Taking the photography of Mann, Atget or Schmidt or a photographer of your own choosing as your 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 your 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.”

In addition to the work of Mann, Atget and Schmidt, the course notes for this exercise also refer to a light with no mystery described by Brian Catling in the fantasy novel, The Vorrh (Catling, 2012)

‘The vulgar gate of the day gives no quarter and its insistent brightness will tell lies about all, forcing the subtlety back into the interiors of trees and the other side of the sky.’

I have taken a series of images to address this exercise, all taken on hill walks in the Lake District and Peak District in winter. The contacts for these shoots are at

Ex4.1 Contacts #1   &   Ex4.1 Contacts #2

The light during the day on both these occasions was bright and the weather clear. As a result the light in many of the images has, to me, the characteristics of that light described by Catling. It is an “insistent brightness” and there is no subtlety in the image – nothing is hidden or mysterious about these images.

The colours are bright and intense, and the shadows do not seem to hold any mystery.

Rendering this type of image into black and white enables a contrasting pattern to emerge and I like to think of this as similar to images made by Fay Godwin (whose work I have described elsewhere in the blog).

However on the same days and in different settings a more subtle image can be found. Drawing on the technique of shooting into the sun used by Atget, more nuanced images can be achieved.

In these images the contrast is reduced and the colours muted – reducing the amount of information in the image. This in itself adds to the mystery of the image and allows the observer to add their own interpretations to the image.

Finally, I have a small series in plantations where the light is altered by being diffused through the trees. Here there is more mystery, reminiscent of the images by Mann.

I note however that all the images I have produced here are on digital cameras and are sharp without the degradation of the image that the equipment and techniques used by Mann (and Atget) produces. I would argue that the atmosphere in their images is a combination of the use and representation of the light together with the loss of detail associated with their techniques.

References

References to the works cited in this post are found in my separate post “References”