Part 4 Light–Project:The Time of Day – Weather 2

Exercise: Cloudy weather and rain
Part 2: Outdoors on an overcast day
The object here was to make three photographs in shadowless, even light including a bright colour and distinct texture to see the effect of even light on these aspects of an image. The camera’s white balance setting was left on direct sunlight.
1. Bright Colour. I chose to photograph my neighbour’s fuchsia bush and spotted this wasp.

7478: 1/90s f16 200mm ISO800

In bright sunlight, such a photograph would have been very difficult to make with the wasp probably lost in shadow. Even at f16, the background is sufficiently blurred to bring the flowers forward and make them  the prime subject of the picture. Another noticeable effect is the saturation of the colours with no strong light to burn them out. 

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2. Texture, pine bark.

7471: 1/45s f13 200mm ISO3200

I doubt if bright sunlight would have retained the subtle colours of this bark, close up on a Scot’s pine trunk. In a bigger image you can make out the spiders webs. High contrast from direct sun would have made this close up image  less detailed.

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3. Texture: Gate catch

7474: 1/30s f22 32mm ISO3200

This one shows three contrasting textures all rendered in fine detail by the even lighting. The shadows aren’t blocked up, neither are the highlights burned out, which is a possibility with strong sunlight.

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4. This is a reference photo to show the ambient light and the grey sky when shooting this part of the exercise.

7480: 1/500s f11 32mm ISO 800

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Conclusion: This part of the exercise clearly demonstrates the the advantage of soft even lighting outdoors to render detail close up and to saturate colours.