Exercise 32: Tungsten & Fluorescent Lighting

With this exercise we examine three light sources:  natural daylight at sunset/dusk, tungsten lighting (that provided by typical light bulbs), and fluorescent.

Before shooting, we are asked to gaze out a window at sunset in a room lit with tungsten light.  After one minute, we look back into the room, then again back out the window to note the difference in lighting.  What I noted is the outside light was blue, inside orange.  The eyes quickly adjust to these changes as you move back and forth between light sources.

We were then to shoot a series of photos combining different types of light sources. The first set was shot about an hour before sunset and shows tungsten to have an orange cast, fluorescent blue-green.  

Exercise 30: Variety with Low Sun

The purpose of this exercise seems to be to capture, in one day, the variety of late afternoon sunlight by changing point of view.  There is no limit on the type or number of subjects, but I chose to limit myself for two reasons.  One, this is a huge object and the sun plays on it quite nicely at the end of the day.  Two, I didn't have much time to search out additional subjects.

The object in question is an industrial size air conditioning unit.  You can read more about the company here. As you can see from the photos, it is an isolated structure about five stories tall with nothing nearby to obstruct the afternoon sun.

My approach was simply to circle the object, shooting as much as possible. I shot entirely on auto.  As a result I had to correct on a couple images for exposure.

Frontal Lighting:  Sun at back

Managing reality

A wonderful little video from the National about the creation of portraits and their function within the laboring communities from South Asia.  I've seen many such photo studios and now I'm somewhat jealous I didn't think of doing something with this idea.  Ah, well.  Life is full of much more.

No way I can find to embed the video, so follow the link.

Exercise 29: Light Throughout the Day

"You are going to take a very detailed look at what happens to a view as the sun moves."

Indeed, I did.  I got up just after 05:00, made a pot of coffee, and carried my gear up to the roof.  I live in a 31 story building on Sheikh Zayed Road, the main thoroughfare through Dubai, the one you see in the marketing and promotional materials, the one with the long row of skyscrapers.  At 31 stories, though, our building is rather dwarfish.

I had the good fortune to work on the same day as the cleaners, a group of Bangladeshis rappelling down the face of the building with high pressure water guns, so there was a chance to chat and photograph something other than landscapes.

Scouting Location: Light Through the Day

The next exercise in Light is shooting on set-up hourly from sunrise to sunset.  When I told my wife about it, she said, "All day?"  Yes, all day.  And because this exercise is such a large commitment in time, it seems prudent to invest a little more scouting location and making sure you are ready to go when the day arrives.

Credit - where credit is due

I was recently reviewing an exhibit catalog of Asian art and while looking through the credits was struck by the neglect shown to the person most responsible for the contents of the book.  The title page has the name of the exhibit, the name of the museum, the name of the curator (in bold), and the names of eight essay contributors.  At the back of the book there is a separate Contributors page in which brief bios are provided of each of these nine people.  The exhibit consists of approximately 300 items, photographically reproduced within the pages of this book.  Who is responsible for the photos?  That information is relegated to the Acknowledgements page.  After five paragraphs of thank you's, there is, in smaller type at the bottom, a section titled Reproductions, in which we at last find the name of the photographer.

Is it because the photographer is viewed as a technician that he doesn't rate the same credit as the essayist? Is this treatment typical at art institutions?  

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Stay on the bus

A bit inspiration passed on from someone at the OCA forum.  I have to say I often feel this way, wondering why I bother to take photos when it has all been done before.  Photographer and educator Arno Rafael Minkkinen suggests you do what you like, keep on doing it, and out of the process a unique vision will one day emerge.

And so, if your heart is set on 8×10 platinum landscapes in misty southern terrains, work your way through those who inspire you, ride their bus route, and damn those who would say you are merely repeating what has been done before. Wait for the months and years to pass, and soon your differences will begin to appear with clarity and intelligence, your originality will become visible, even in the works from those very first years of trepidation when everything you did seemed to have been done before.

Thank you, Arno.

Exercise 28: Judging Color Temperature

The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate the effect of White Balance (WB) on color. Of the several definitions I found on the web, Ken Rockwell's seems the most straightforward:

Exercise 27: Higher and Lower Density

The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate the trade off between high and low ISO settings. With high settings it is possible to capture just about anything hand-held, including moving objects in low light.  The price to pay is in grainy or "noisy" images.

Exercise 26: Measuring Exposure

The first exercise in Part 4 has to do with exposure and is much like this one, in which we were asked to shoot a scene with different exposures to demonstrate how light effects color.  In this exercise the idea seems to be getting the "right" exposure in relation to a number of elements in addition to color, such as preserving detail in shadowy corners, or conversely erasing detail to create deep pockets of black, as in silhouettes. 

Exercise: Different types of metering

Great feedback on Assignment 3 came in this morning, just as I am kicking off Part 4:  Lighting.  This exercise is not part of the course but something I thought useful to explore.  Freeman kicks off his discussion of light with a review of types of metering, so I headed out to see how types of metering manifest.  Here are results from scenes captured just out back, a 5 minute walk from the flat (which is actually pictured here).  The only post-processing on these images is lens correction and sharpening.