Sometimes you need a bit of luck

It was Thursday morning – and fairly early for me as I had to drive to head office for a series of meetings. I had just popped into the front room to pick up my phone when a quick look through the window revealed the most stunning sunrise I recall seeing. I was just grabbing my cameras from a bag when my wife called to draw my attention to it. I’m sure it wasn’t there 5 minutes previously – and 5 minutes after these shots were taken it was completely unremarkable again. Project 18 calls for a series of shots across the sunrise – but no amount of recomposing was ever going to produce shots to match the colours or interest in these:

This first one was taken on my E-P1 using an old OM 135mm with an adapter that I received for Christmas. I’m pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to use, although in this instance I think a tripod may have been helpful as the lens is a 270mm equivalent on the E-P1 and a little tricky to focus accurately while hand-holding.

The next three are attempts to produce very different photos on the basis of framing and focal length, with slight changes in position. They were all taken with a standard 14-54 zoom (28-108mm equivalent):

The first draws on the tree silhouettes in the foreground, the second is purely about the sky and the third includes the mountain for context.

While I was at it I tried to find a close foreground object to add some variety further variety, and settled on shooting through the bars of this gate.In the second of these two shots I used the cameras on-board flash for fill, and overall I think this adds significantly to the picture.

 

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.

Dusk light

I’m struggling with these exercises because of a combination of dismal weather, personal and work commitments, so to make progress I’ve picked two images from my shoot for Assignment 1. The first is taken at 14mm and the second about 5 minutes later at 54mm. At the time of year they were taken twilight advances very slowly so the lighbting is still very similar.

I’ve not printed these but viewing the RAW files on screen shows very subtle gradings of colour both across the blue area and between the differing colours. Unsurprisingly the colours get darker and more saturated the further they get from the sun. This has the effect of concentrating attention on the area which is still lit.