On Mood

[pecunium]

Photography is all about light. No light, no picture.

So seeing light is the thing which matters most. I (and lots of photographers) have gotten "lost in the light" as some spectacular (or just interesting, pregant with possibilties) bit of light played across a potential subject.

Light is also how mood is conveyed. The angle, the color/temperature (which is part of the color... and the part a digital camera tries to measure) the amount, all combine to set the "feel" of a picture.

Look at these two portraits of me. The light falling on me is much the same in angle, and in shadow, but the sense of subject is very different (trying to ignore the other differences in subject).





The first seems far more intimate than the second (even ignoring the lack of a shirt). Largely from the lighting. That same pose outdoors, with a tree providing the shade in the mid-afteroon would be a very different picture; even if I were shirtless in it too.

The second is brighter, less intimate; because the light is "harder", an the shadows are crisper.

So, in a large scale, how does that work?

It happens I have a couple of landscapes, both with clouds.







In some ways the light is direcly opposed in them; with the elements reversed. The foreground in the upper photo is defined by the shadow (which provides a countering line to the trail the cyclist is on), and the mountains rise up to the sun.

In the second, the sun lifts the hill in the forground up, out of the murky distance.


They are both pictures with a some sweep, the horizon is a big element in both of them. But the light is different. It's more brooding in the second shot. The darkness in in the background, and seems to rise up to the very clouds. Ten minutes later, and the back of that ridgeling was as bright as the one above it, and the image is, actually, pretty dull. The sense of forboding sits on it, and gives an otherwise busy picture a sense of stillness.

(p.s. I decided that smaller images was probably kinder to those who aren't really interested in the pictures. One may, of course, open them in a new tab/window to see them in more detail. If you want the larger images in the posts, let me know).

Comments

[mesoterica.livejournal.com]

That's really cool - I didn't know such a variance in lighting could have as drastic a difference in a large landscape as on a relatively close-up portrait.