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

Notice the darkness of the vertical images, a result of the camera underexposing for so much light.  This is particularly so on the logo image, which absorbed quite a lot of light from the reflection off the street sign.


Side Lighting:  Half the subject in sun

Back Lighting:  Shooting toward the light

The last two shots here demonstrate the change of lighting as one moves away from the light source.  The top photo has a more orange cast as a bit more light seeps in from around the left side of the building. A blue cast results when moving to the right and blocking more of the light.  The two tower images show how direct afternoon light has more orange, and how this affects the color of the sky.

There is one more type of lighting we were asked to shoot, but I'm not sure what it is.  Freeman doesn't provide any example photos in his course notes.  Conceptually I get the idea, but maybe I haven't yet run into it.  This is edge lighting, "in which the sun is outside the viewfinder frame and the edge of the subject is lit."  In my images, all the edges touched by the sun are lit.  Is that what is meant?


Next day:  29 March

Went out for a morning bicycle ride and found my subject bathed in a bar of early sunlight.  This is the sun low on the horizon streaming between towers.

I also found a nice example of backlight, with rays pouring through the gaps in the buildings, as well as what is probably a great example of edge lighting, the sun off-camera left and the edges of the buildings sparkling with morning sunshine. The less dramatic objects are edge lit as well, such as the umbrellas at left, or the huts at right.

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