Languages of Light: Analysis

(The following is the text from the submission I am required to make with my images for Assignment 4. It is a precis of other posts in my learning log which expand on these topics.)

While “beauty” is a subjective term, I have considered the statement by Mary Richardson, following her attack on the Rokeby Venus (From the Rokeby Venus to Fascism Pt 1: Why did suffragettes attack artworks?, s.d.)

Richardson is quoted as saying “Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas”

I have extended this argument to concerns in contemporary society, where environmental issues should be prominent. Thus I have suggested “an artificial light source could only be considered to demonstrate “beauty” if it does not harm the environment”, either by using excessive and unnecessary energy, and/or contributing to light pollution. I have found this a difficult concept to incorporate into my images, but have attempted to do so.

Influences:

The influences I have consciously tried to incorporate into my work include those of Sally Mann and Rut Blees Luxemburg.

Sally Mann refers to “the refulgence or the reflection when light and water interact” (Rong and Mann, 2013), albeit with respect of images made in daylight. However this is also the case with artificial light. “Refulgence” incorporates the qualities of “splendour, brightness, radiance…shining with or reflecting, a brilliant light; radiant, resplendent, gleaming…”

It is this quality of the light in Rut Blees Luxemburg’s series,”Liebeslied: My Suicides” (Luxemberg and Duttman, 2000) which I hoped to emulate. In addition, Rut Blees Luxemburg’s images of night-time London, have a distinctive colour palette, with a very marked orange overtone to many of the images which is different from how I perceive night-time scenes illuminated by street lighting. I aimed to try and establish the reason for this and to incorporate it into my images.

The work of Duncan Hill, in particular his series “Night Topographics”, includes images with a similar colour palette but also add a distinctive feeling of unease, very empty of day to day life expected in a scene during the day. Other images of trees illuminated by street lighting show the foliage in a different aspect. This is also the case for images made by Matthew Murray from his series, “Saddleworth” created by lighting “the landscape with artificial lighting, external lights, torches, car headlights” (Murray, 2017). I aimed to capture the unusual appearance of foliage when lit from unexpected directions.

I wanted to develop the assignment from the original exercise by

Better capturing “the beauty of artificial light” -particularly with regard to the construct of beauty I have suggested above

Capturing more of the interaction between the light and water, and the reflection of lights from different surfaces as it creates interesting patterns, unique to the night time

Overall, when I reviewed my exercise I realised many of the images were of artificial lights, not images made by artificial light. In many if not most of the images made by those photographers I cite, the actual light source is not seen… My overall aim is to make images using the artificial light to illuminate the scene.

Methods

I used a slow ISO value to obtain high-quality images which would most faithfully express the quality of light I was trying to capture, as a result of this long exposure times were necessary with a tripod.

I wanted to capture all the qualities of the light, including colour, so I used my digital camera as I am not equipped to use colour film at the present.

Colour Balance setting was a major consideration for my methodology. I had made all the images for Exercise 4.2 using “auto” setting for white balance. However some of the resulting images were somewhat disappointing as this setting tended to make the image look as if it had been made in daylight. I wanted to try and capture more about the quality of the artificial light and what it adds to the scene as it would otherwise be illuminated. I chose to use a custom white balance setting for my images. This involved setting the white balance for the light conditions after sunset, without any influence of artificial light. In this way, any “colour cast” would actually be the light that the artificial light had added to the scene.

Images were shot in RAW and edited in Lightroom. Adjustments were confined to cropping and local exposure adjustments. No changes were made to the coloration.

My Images

I noticed that LED Lights cast a distinctive shadow due to having several light sources together. These lights might be considered to demonstrate “beauty” by being more energy efficient than others.

Images EYV Ass 4-40, EYV Ass 4-41, EYV Ass 4-44, EYV Ass 4-46 and show different aspects of this patterning.

The interaction of light and water is shown in images EYV Ass 4-37 and EYV Ass 4-29. However the lit area at the visible end of the industrial site is a lorry wash, not in use at that time so it is difficult to justify these images meeting my criteria for beauty.

EYV Ass 4-4 shows the reflections of lights on parked cars.

The unusual appearance of foliage when lit from unexpected directions is shown in images EYV Ass 4-40 and EYV Ass 4-34.

Images EYV Ass 4-1, EYV Ass 4-6, and EYV Ass 4-2 are attempts to capture the feeling of being present at night when everywhere is quiet and deserted, and the light gives a different appearance to common scenes.

Making these images has involved a great deal of experimentation on my part, this was a new direction for me. I think that while I have had to use imagination to imagine what the scene would look like at night, I actually learned as I went along that the image my camera produced was distinct and differed from the daylight scene in ways I found difficult to predict at first. I am not sure how inventive I have been, these are all taken in the immediate vicinity of my home.

References

References to cited work is in my post “References” in my learning log at ap231photography.com

Assignment 4: Languages of light 3

In this post I will describe the final images submitted, and the strengths and weaknesses of particular photographs and the project as a whole.

I made the images on shoots on two separate occasions. Contacts for the shoots are here.

Contacts 23 June 2020

Contacts 26 June 2020

Of these images I selected a number that I believe fulfil the ways I set to develop the assignment from Exercise 4.2.

These areas for development are:

“I do not think I have addressed “the beauty of artificial light” in these images”

LED street lights with many light sources in the array, gave a very distinctive pattern of shadows.

“I would like to try and capture more of the interaction between the light and water”

“the reflection of lights from different surfaces creates interesting patterns, unique to the night time”

These elements all relate to the idea of refulgence of the lights, which I would like to capture more.

“The pools of different types of light on the ground here make patterns which could be the subject for further exploration”

This relates to this part of one of my images..

“…many of the images were of artificial lights, not images made by artificial light…

My overall aim is to make images using the artificial light to illuminate the scene.”

Patterns of shadows from LED Lights

I noticed this pattern of shadows from the foliage, seen in the foreground of this image.

This I have also shown in these taken nearby.

Interaction of Light and Water/Reflections

I identified this location and viewpoint which I thought would be enhanced by the artificial lights from the industrial buildings later in the evening. (This image is not part of my submission)

The final images I selected are these:

While these are striking images and might be considered to show a type of beauty, the brightly lit area at the visible end of the industrial site is a lorry wash, not in use at that time. In fact there was very little activity on the site during the time I was taking photographs, so it is difficult to justify these images meeting my own criteria for beauty, that an artificial light source could only be considered to demonstrate “beauty” if it does not harm the environment, either by using excessive and unnecessary energy, and/or contributing to light pollution”.

I also tried to capture the reflections of lights on parked cars, as I indicated in Exercise 4.2.

EYV Ass 4-4

Using the artificial light to illuminate the scene

Developing the idea I had from the work of Duncan Hill, to look at how the lights illuminate foliage I made these images.

The other principle I saw from Duncan Hill is the feeling of being present at night when everywhere is quiet and deserted, and the light gives a different appearance to common scenes. These images try to capture that.

The notes indicate I should evaluate my images against the criteria for creativity – imagination, experimentation, invention.

Making these images has involved a great deal of experimentation on my part, this was a new direction for me. I think that while I have had to use imagination to imagine what the scene would look like at night, I actually learned as I went along that the image my camera produced was distinct and differed from the daylight scene in ways I found difficult to predict at first. I am not sure how inventive I have been, these are all taken in the immediate vicinity of my home.

Assignment 4: Languages of light 2

In this post I will describe my technical approach and the methods I have used.

Camera set-up

My experience with Exercise 4.2 I learned that I needed to use a slow ISO value to obtain high-quality images which would most faithfully express the quality of light I was trying to capture – ie the refulgence, the brightness and radiance of the light and its reflections. As a result of this long exposure times were necessary with a tripod.

I wanted to capture all the qualities of the light, including colour, so this necessitated my using my digital camera as I am not equipped to use colour film at the present. A second consideration is that the digital camera provides a more immediate feedback and allows me to assess the exposure immediately.

Images were made with a Canon EOS 5D Mk4 and either a 24-105mm zoom lens or 50mm f1.2 prime.I selected apertures of between f8 and f16 to enable a deep depth of field as this seemed appropriate for the compositions I was aiming for.

Exposures were made according to the camera metering, set to centre-weighted average, and then adjusted if needed.

Colour Balance

This was a major consideration for my methodology.

I had made all the images for Exercise 4.2 using “auto” setting for white balance. However some of the resulting images were somewhat disappointing as this setting tended to make the image look as if it had been made in daylight.

An example of this is.

Here the foliage and buildings appear just as they might do in the daylight even though it was made about one hour after sunset. I felt that this setting of my camera failed to capture the experience of viewing the scene at night with artificial light.

Although I am fairly familiar with the principles of white balance, in particular from experience of taking photographs by ambient light underwater, I revised my knowledge by referring to a recommended textbook (Diprose and Robins, 2012).

Visible light is part of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation which encompasses what we know as radio waves, microwaves, infra-red radiation, ultra-violet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays. It just happens that through evolution our eyes are sensitive only to electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths in a restricted range, “visible light”. Within that range, we perceive different wavelengths as being of different colours. While the wavelengths of light can vary continuously, we perceive the colours as distinct and discrete, due to the way the light receptors in our eyes are constructed. There is nothing inherently “red” about electromagnetic radiation which we perceive as red light, it is rather that it triggers responses from light sensitive cells which are interpreted by us as red.

White light is composed of all wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range, but different light sources have different combinations of these. So when there is a preponderance of longer wavelengths (ie reds and orange) we see this as a “warm” light. Conversely when there is a preponderance of blue and violet wavelengths this seems a “cool” light. This is referred to as “colour temperature”, which in turn relates to a theoretical black object radiating light as it is heated, we are familiar with the idea of heating a piece of metal which starts to glow red and as it gets hotter, brighter.

As photographers we have to take photographs in various types of light. “Daylight” might be the light of a clear blue sky, dominated by short wavelength blue light – so is considered a cool light. Conversely, around sunset and sunrise the light has more red and orange (due to passing a longer distance through the atmosphere, which filters out the blue wavelengths). Rather confusingly the “cool” light of the blue sky would be assigned a colour temperature around 10000K, a hotter temperature than the “warm” light of sunset which would be of the order of 5000K.

Artificial light sources also have this range of colour temperatures. So that an incandescent household bulb will have a warm light (≈3000K), while fluorescent tubes may be cooler (of the order of 5000K).

We do not always perceive this difference. Our eyes and brain adjust to the light source, and we tend not to notice the difference unless the light sources of different temperatures are adjacent to each other. Our cameras however do not make this adjustment and show the light source as it is, and as a result colours may not appear how we perceive them.

The white balance correction allows us to adjust for this; either by specifying a colour temperature or picking a pre-set corresponding to a type of light. Once that is set, white objects appear white, without a colour cast corresponding to the type of light.

An alternative is the Auto White Balance setting. The Canon website (V and Canon Europe Ltd 2002-, s.d.) describes this. “ Auto White Balance works by evaluating the scene and deciding the most appropriate white point in it. The setting works reasonably well if the colour temperature of the ambient light is between 3,000-7,000K. However, if there is an abundance of one colour in the image, or if there is no actual white for the meter to use as a reference, the system can be fooled, resulting in an image with a colour cast.”

For Exercise 4.2, I used Auto White Balance. While this did not result in a colour cast, some of the resulting images did not reflect the appearance of the scene as I saw it. One example of this is this image which looks like it has been taken during the day, rather than an hour after sunset.

I wanted to try and capture more about the quality of the artificial light and what it adds to the scene as it would otherwise be illuminated. I chose to use a custom white balance setting for my images. This involved setting the white balance for the light conditions after sunset, without any influence of artificial light. In this way, any “colour cast” would actually be the light that the artificial light had added to the scene.

Post-processing

Images were shot in RAW and edited in Lightroom. Adjustments were confined to cropping and local exposure adjustments. No changes were made to the coloration.

References

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

Assignment 4: Languages of light 1

Brief

“Revisit one of the exercises on daylight, artificial light or controlled light from Part Four (Ex 4.1, Ex 4.2 or Ex 4.3) and develop it into a formal assignment submission. The submission requirement for this assignment is a set of between six and ten high-quality photographic prints.”

The brief also requires I include an analysis of the work outlining:

• how you have developed the assignment from the original exercise in Part 4
• which practitioners you’ve looked at for inspiration and how their work has influenced you
• your technical approach and any particular techniques you incorporated
• the strengths and weaknesses of particular photographs and your project as a whole (self-assessment)

In this post I will address the first two points (how I have developed the assignment from the original exercise and which practitioners I have looked at for inspiration and how their work has influenced my submission).

I will address the other points in later posts describing the methods used and the images submitted.

Prior to starting this element of the course I posted some initial thoughts about this assignment.

“My initial thoughts on this are that I will probably choose to do the “Daylight” or “Artificial Light” exercises as my Assignment submission as I have already developed a studio-lit sequence for my submission for Assignment 2. This is a learning experience and I think I will learn more if I use a different technique for this assignment.”

Having now completed the exercises in this part of the course I have decided to revise the “Exercise 4.2: Artificial Light” as my assignment. This is largely because I have found that exercise the most challenging of the three.

I have previously completed an assignment using studio lighting, and developed the exercise 4.3 into a submission for Exercise 5.2: Homage. I am most familiar with working in daylight, but found the technical challenges of working by ambient artificial light more challenging. Also, I found it more difficult to predict what the image would look like after a long exposure, as it did not always resemble my perception of the scene. I have discussed this more later with reference to the methods and technical aspects of the project.

In myaccount of my work for Exercise 4.2, I refer to a number of themes which have influenced my and my approach to the exercise and assignment. I will summarise these and refer back to my earlier accounts.

My Interpretation of Beauty in Relation to Artificial Light

While it is the case that “beauty” is, as the course notes suggest, a subjective term, I have considered this in the light of the statement by Mary Richardson, following her attack on the Rokeby Venus (From the Rokeby Venus to Fascism Pt 1: Why did suffragettes attack artworks?, s.d.)

Richardson is quoted as saying “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas”

I have extended this argument to concerns in contemporary society, where environmental issues should be prominent. Thus I have suggested “an artificial light source could only be considered to demonstrate “beauty” if it does not harm the environment”, either by using excessive and unnecessary energy, and/or contributing to light pollution. I have found this a difficult concept to incorporate into my images, but will attempt to do so.

Artists and Photographers as Influences

In my initial account of my approach to the Exercise 4.2, I described the work of the artists referred to in the course notes.

Of these the influences I have consciously tried to incorporate into my work include those of Sally Mann and Rut Blees Luxemburg.

Sally Mann refers to “the refulgence or the reflection when light and water interact” (Rong and Mann, 2013), albeit with respect of images made in daylight. However this is also the case also the case with artificial light.

I was unfamiliar with the term “refulgence”, however the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Little et al., 1973) defines this

Refulgence “The quality of being refulgent, splendour, brightness, radiance…”

Refulgent “Shining with or reflecting, a brilliant light; radiant, resplendent, gleaming…”

It is this quality of the light in Rut Blees Luxemburg’s series,”Liebeslied: My Suicides”(Luxemberg and Duttman, 2000) which I hoped to emulate.

In addition, Rut Blees Luxemburg’s images of night-time London, have a distinctive colour palette, with a very marked orange overtone to many of the images. This is illustrated by images such as these

One of the consequences of this is that the final image has a colour range which is different from how I perceive night-time scenes illuminated by street lighting. I set out to try and establish the reason for this and to incorporate it into my images.

In addition, my tutor referred me to the work of Duncan Hill, in particular his series “Night Topographics”, such as this

This image has a similar colour palette to those of Rut Blees Luxemburg. However, it also adds a distinctive feeling of unease, as large parts of the scene are hidden in darkness. It also appears very empty of the day to day life as might be expected of a road junction during the day. This encapsulates to me a feeling of what it is like to be out late at night/early morning before the town gets going.

Duncan Hill also has images of trees illuminated by street lighting; these show the foliage in a different aspect.

They remind me of the images I saw made by Matthew Murray from his series, “Saddleworth” made by lighting “the landscape with artificial lighting, external lights, torches, car headlights” (Murray, 2017).

I hoped to capture the unusual appearance of foliage when lit from unexpected directions.

Development from the original exercise in Part 4

I have already suggested ways in which I would like to develop the exercise. These include:

“I do not think I have addressed “the beauty of artificial light” in these images”

I find it hard to work out how to address this – in the event I found that LED street lights with many light sources in the array, gave a very distinctive pattern of shadows. I will discuss how I think I address this in my analysis.

“I would like to try and capture more of the interaction between the light and water”

“the reflection of lights from different surfaces creates interesting patterns, unique to the night time”

These elements all relate to the idea of refulgence of the lights, which I would like to capture more.

“The pools of different types of light on the ground here make patterns which could be the subject for further exploration”

This relates to this part of one of my images..

Overall, when I reviewed my exercise I realised many of the images were of artificial lights, not images made by artificial light. In many if not most of the images made by those photographers I cite, the actual light source is not seen… My overall aim is to make images using the artificial light to illuminate the scene.

References

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