More Contre Jour

Exercise 20 – with it’s emphasis on sun stars is ultimately about shooting into the sun. It undoubtedly a tricky technique to get the exposure right , and even more tricky in the absence of easily available sunlight. yesterday would have been perfect for these exercises, but I was working – so I just have to keep waiting for an opportunity. In the meantime, and in good old Blue Peter fashion, here are a couple of takes on shooting into the light (and the infernal sunstars) that I prepared earlier.
These first two are very much earlier in fact – dating to 2005 with my first digital camera. They don’t feature sunstars – the sun was behind some cloud and much too diffuse for that but they do feel like decent examples of using sunlight, reflections and silhouettes to achieve a satisfactory composition.

In both these examples a silhouette against the reflected light of the sun adds to the overall composition – in fact in the version to the right it’s the whole point of the composition.

In this example – which I took with this exercise in mind - I have hidden the sun behind the tree on the left so that I can expose for some detail in the foreground. Again the cloud has diffused the sun too much for sun star effects to be really obvious, although close inspection does reveal a couple of relatively weak examples. Although the guy sitting on the bank adds a nice touch, I think that the light/camera on the pole rather detracts from the beachside idyll in this shot.

And finally, something that rather turns the concept of a silhouette on it’s head and has a luminous body against a dark background, and still manages to include a “star”. this was taken in Switzerland while I was studying People and Place (which in truth is where I think this technique belongs). I used the floodlit Jette and the luminous spray to form the main composition, dwarfing the masts to the left  - which are reverse silhouetted against a darker sky beyond. A conveniently placed searchlight on the far bank of the lake has then served the role of the sun to add a highlight of interest in the bottom right of the shot.