Working with natural light
Examples of dealing with elusive light Let’s look at a couple of photographs that illustrate the relevance of what I was talking about on the last page in real life. Churches are actually a common place to find light beaming through windows. The ingredients necessary for this lighting phenomena to occur are strong light outdoors penetrating the interior via a narrow opening and striking the dust floating around in the air. As soon as I entered the church in the image on this page, I realized that the ingredients were just right for the “magic beaming light”. Of course, light alone may not have been enough for a strong image. Because I understood what conditions would cause this light, I knew that I could potentially find the phenomena occurring in an interesting setting that would make for a truly engaging image. I walked around, searching for such a setting, and ended up shooting in the place you see in the photograph. The other lesson I learned from past observations was that the light beams were more prominent from some angles and less so from others. When I encountered the scenario in the image, I consciously looked for the spot from where the light beam would be most prominent and dramatic. I initially saw the scene in the second image from a different angle than the one I shot from. Initially it didn’t look as dramatic, but the animals had kicked up a lot of dust to the air and the sun was setting. I knew that these were the elements for what was potentially a very dramatic lighting scenario. My prior knowledge again allowed me to take advantage of this quickly unfolding scene. I knew where to position myself to get a shot that worked well. I had to run in front of the herd to be able to photograph them while pointing the camera towards the sun. This would cause the dust to turn golden. I didn’t shoot directly into the sun because I didn’t want hard, dark silhouettes; I wanted semi-silhouettes and nice bright rims of light around the outlines of the animals and the people. Instead of shooting straight into the sun, I stood up, tilted the camera very slightly down, and got the effect I was looking for. The general point of the examples and the stories I’ve shared is that even though some lighting scenarios might be more rare than others, they are still possible to “read” and prepare for. As with anything, the more knowledge and experience we have, the better prepared we are.
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(top) 220mm, f/2.8, 1/200s, ISO 800 (bottom) 70-200@150mm, f/11, 1/400s, ISO 200