Creating Light and Shadow Photography
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.
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