COLOR & LIGHT

Small, volunteer silver maple, backlit, with background river shadows.  

Photography is all about "capturing" light. Color is that fourth element of a scene or object besides shape, form, and texture. Light impacts and changes color. 

New leaves, riverbank ailanthus, backlit.

In nature, light is ever-shifting, depending on time of day, season, sky conditions, direction, even parts of a nearby landscape that might affect the quality or quantity of light reaching your subject. This, in turn, affects the light's color and thus the color of whatever you're looking to photograph—no matter if that light is reflected, direct, ambient, etc.

Shade-growing species tulips,
dramatically spotlit by a bit of sun.

The trio of images in today's post were all taken over the last few days—and all were shot within a dozen feet of one another, while sitting in my deckside rocker waiting for a passing warbler to come flitting along. They're nothing special so far as content goes…it was the light and it illuminating effect on the color of my subject that I was trying to capture. 

Light is everything in photography—the elemental magic capable of transforming the mundane into the sublime. Even turning that proverbial sow's ear into a silk purse—at least visually.

The trick is learning to see.

Often, when I can't seem to find a scene or subject to photograph—like when those warblers I'm anticipating fail to materialize—I shift my thinking and start searching for situations featuring light which, through its wonderful alchemy, has altered the commonplace into something beautiful or interesting—a moment worth recording and sharing. And just as soon as I flip this mental switch, I invariably start to spot one potential image after another.

––––––

FADING TO BLACK

It begins with a final wash of gold high in the top of the tallest sycamore. As if the changing leaves had been varnished with bright, warm light. All the surrounding trees are dark, lost in the shadows of twilight. Only this old monarch, it's west-facing crown higher than those of its brethren, witnesses the day's final moments.

In the riffle and the pool above, other trees paint the water with their reflected hues. A fish stirs, takes something off the surface; quickly another feeds. This edge of darkness is the magic hour for the angler, the bewitching moment when the elemental veil seems to rend and water and sky becomes one, with you in the middle. Anything can happen. Your next cast might be that one you've dreamed about…but whether it yields a fish or mermaid, who can truly say?

The riffle begins to darken as the river cloaks itself in shadows. Objects such as stones and logs and clumps of leaves lose their details, turning into shapes—silhouettes of their former selves now surrounded by a flow of quicksilver blue.

And then even that is gone—and the only remaining evidence of the day upon the stream is a single scattering of sparkles on the pool below. A handful of magenta embers, vestiges of the sun's ebbing flame which have somehow found their way through the trees covering the far bank.

You stand quietly and watch this corridor woods as the light winks between the trunks—the sun falling, falling, pulled over the horizon until it becomes merely a glow that quickly fades to black.

Then you glance back and up, wondering if the top of the tall sycamore still has the lost day in view—but now you see only a shadow, a towering dark ghost…for all is nothing without the light.

UNDERSTANDING THE LIGHT

Just after sunrise, when I stepped outside with the dog, the first thing that stuck me was the unusual silence. Of course, being that I live beside a woods-lined river located in that borderland beyond well-manicured suburbia and what a farmer would consider genuine shaggy rurality, the silence was more conditional than complete; not really a total lack of sound, but rather an absence of the usual background noise.

The only bird sound I heard during my twenty-minute sortie along the riverbank and to various corners of the yard around the cottage, was a single brief peal of maniacal laughter from a pileated woodpecker on the distant lower end of the island across from the house. Otherwise, not a blue jay or cardinal, robin or titmouse—not even one of my beloved Carolina wrens—had yet found either voice or reason to disturb the hush.

Even the river, following its ancient path from source to sea, seemed muted. Though we’ve had several good rains during the past couple of weeks, the water finding its way down and through the long riffle—over, around, under the stones and gravel and those few scattered boulders whose smooth, rounded edges speak of time measured in millennia—the sound of its passage was scarcely more than a stealthy liquid whisper—shhhhhhhh….

The air was damp and a cool you could rightly call chilled. Not cold, but what my grandfather called “nippy.” A temperature that’s been hanging around cold’s neighborhood long enough to pick up certain bad habits. I was glad I’d slipped on a heavy shirt before coming out.

A month ago the sun would have been well up by now. A month ago the birds—in spite of the fact their business of establishing territory and finding a mate, nesting, hatching and subsequently feeding hungry fledglings, had all long passed—were still raising their voices to the rising sun; while that morning chorus might not have approached the joyous volume of May’s, or even June’s, it was still loud and decidedly enthusiastic. A month ago I could have padded around the property’s boundaries wearing nothing more than shorts and flip-flops and been perfectly comfortable.

Now, the silence—or what passes for silence, anyway—along with the later dawn and brisk temperature, was telling. A portent of changing times and days to come.

Looking down the river, with a thick wall of greenery along either side, it is hard to imagine those banks stark and open, leafless; difficult to recall the gray-green color of the water, or a sheath of pale ice along its borders. And yet I know that season is coming.

The light this morning was still warm and golden. But there was the gold of turning maples in there, and of October’s shagbark hickories.

Maybe that’s why the birds were so quiet…because they, too, noticed and understood the light.

MOODS AND MOMENTS

Have you ever noticed how a single moment can change your mood? Today has been mostly overcast. Not dark and dreary, just a bit on the gray side—somewhat dim, as if you’d mistakenly put too weak a bulb in your favorite reading lamp. Flat light that would normally have been soothing and soft, great for close-up photography, but which today somehow made the world beyond my workroom window appear bland and lackadaisical. I admit, it was probably more me than the low-intensity light. And I certainly didn’t mind about the few snowflakes I saw swirling about from time to time. In fact, it was odd. Days such as this normally seem to energize me; if anything, I’m the opposite of a SAD sufferer. No winter blues or seasonal depression. Short days, long nights, no problem. But last night had been a restless one; I spent as much time awake as asleep. I arose at my usual pre-dawn hour and didn’t feel particularly tired. I have, however, felt chilled and lethargic all day, though not as if I were getting sick. Yet I couldn’t seem to settle into my work. It wasn’t a case of lazy, or a bout of creative ennui. In fact, I couldn’t even chuck everything aside temporarily and lose myself in a book—which is almost without precedent. For want of anything better, I’ve spent the time futzing, fiddling with this and that since midmorning, busying myself with small tasks that didn’t require much in the way of concentration or energy. And then…I happened to glance out the window just as the afternoon sun came pouring through a seam in the otherwise wooly-gray sky. Bright light streamed down, into the sycamores and onto the river. I grabbed my camera and rushed outside. It was still cold, below freezing. But the sun made it seem warm—at least I didn’t notice the chill, in spite of not having put on a jacket. I only had time for two quick shots of the interplay of light upon the water before the overhead clouds sealed their leak, as if realizing they’d made a mistake and allowed an errant shaft of bright sunlight to escape. As suddenly as it appeared, the scintillating illumination was gone, switched off. The gray returned, the light went flat, and I headed back inside. But that brief time of light had been enough. An internal fire had been lit; I could feel the energy returning. My mood executed an abrupt 180 degree about-face. All it took was that single moment.