A dull gray sky is a final challenge with gentle light (Figure 3.5). Since this light usually comes from a cloudy day, those clouds can make a sky unattractive in a photograph. Dramatic, stormy clouds are great, but often a cloudy day just offers a gray mass that doesn’t record well in a photo. The easiest way to deal with that is just to avoid it—don’t even include it in the composition, or at most, include only a thin sliver of clouds to define the top of your scene. Once you start noticing dramatic and gentle light on the landscape, you’ll start seeing all types of light.
directionaL Light Landscapes have depth, form, and dimension, but a photograph has none of that. It’s flat and two-dimensional. In order to get a better landscape photo, you need to recognize that limitation and work to create an impression of depth, form, and dimension in the photo. One good way to do this is to recognize and use directional light. Directional light is simply light that is brighter in one direction than another. The easiest way to think of this is to consider a low sun just after sunrise, as shown in my image of dunes along the Florida Atlantic Coast (Figure 3.6). The light has a very strong directional aspect because of the low sun that creates streaks of light across the land, along with good shadows.
FIgure 3.6 Directional light brings out the form and texture of these dunes beside the Atlantic Ocean in Florida.
ISO 100 1/45 sec. f/16 13mm (APS-C)
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L a n d s c a p e p h o t o g r a p h y : f r o m s n a p s h o t s t o g r e at s h o t s