You can’t have shadows without light. It’s a good thing that I like capturing both in my photography. I like that shadows add a certain mood and dimension all their own. It helps capture something that would be difficult to capture for a new photographer. Even before I started with my DSLR, I loved creating light and shadow photography.

These shadows that I captured in our trip to Bedford Reservation were so striking that I noticed them while driving to the parking lot. I was in awe as I observed them from the car. I knew that I could make something special if I worked with it enough. The dramatic shadows and sunlight did all of the work for me.

I had to decide how much light and how much shadow should be included in each frame. I took enough of each type of photo that it wasn’t an either-or situation. And though the majority of the shots are fairly dark, I like the way they came out. When given the chance to increase the exposure in Lightroom, I preferred the contrast of the darker photos.

This was a situation where I was in the right place at the right time. Similar light didn’t do much for me at another location that I was just at a few minutes ago. Here with the light and pathway, though, it was perfect.

It was a great combination of light and shadows. This allowed me to stay between f8 and f11 with only a 100 ISO. The shutter speed was a 1/80 which was good for allowing more light. I suspect this was also a reason for so many of my early photos being blurry or at least not as sharp as I’d like them to be. But that didn’t matter as much this time as the photos came out well (to me at least).

This portion of the path is conducive to this type of photo as it’s somewhat oriented east/west though it bends and turns quite a bit. This works well when the sun is setting or rising.

Lessons Learned:

Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time. In this case, once I saw something that I thought would look good in camera, I took advantage immediately and it worked out well. This was a case of the light and shadows doing all of the work and I just had to capture it in camera.

Viaduct Park is a relatively small park, a link in a larger chain of parks in the area, and a part of the Bedford Reservation. The main section consists of a walkway that takes you down to Tinkers Creek. The creek then dramatically spills over to The Great Falls of Tinkers Creek. The area near the creek and down and around the falls is beautiful. I was hoping to get some great shots of the surrounding area. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that the light would not be good enough for what I was attempting to do which was essentially taking photos in the forest.

It was near the golden hour and the light should have been perfect. I didn’t take into account the many tall trees that effectively blocked out the majority of the light.

With light being the primary component of photography, it’s difficult for a new photographer to get good pictures with minimal light. This is especially the case because I was shooting completely manual. This meant that I would have to figure this out on my own.

With the trees blocking the light I had to find instances where the sun would peek through and provide light. Those instances were few and far between. But when I did, the results were great.

The problem was that I was still learning to take pictures on a manual with a DSLR so many of the pictures were out of focus and not as clear as I had hoped. This was partially the result of my lowering the shutter speed to let in more light.

When I did manage to get clear pictures, I liked the results. I was able to use the light that I was given and produce the photographs that I liked.

Some of the best results were pics where I was able to get out into the river while stepping on rocks. There was a couple sitting on a ledge that was backlit that I got a few pics of. With more experience, I would have been able to do more with the scene.

The other pics that came out well were the pics of daisies and other wildflowers. They happened to be in the stream of sunlight that peeked through the forest. This produced a bit of a spotlight effect on the flowers which I was able to enhance once I got home and edited the photos.

Lessons learned:

Golden hour is great, but with the sun closer to the horizon, it doesn’t have quite the same effect when you’re in a park surrounded by trees. There were also areas that were partially blocked by cliffs. And those cliffs had trees on top of them.

I realized that if I’m going to take pics in this park, I’ll have to come a bit earlier in the day when the sun is higher in the sky to get the light that I need.

Learning to adjust the ISO instead of relying solely on shutter speed and aperture would have also helped. That way I could’ve gotten more light in my photos even in shaded areas.

Knowing the area that you plan to shoot is essential. So is knowing where the light is going to be and how it’s going to affect your photos. For the most part, when I’m going to a heavily forested area, I’ll be sure to arrive earlier. It also will take practice and experience, because in some aspects, having the sun at that angle and coming through the trees worked out. If that’s what I was looking for.