Light Through the Day

  For this exercise I have set my camera in one position, and set it in aperture priority, on a timer so that it takes one frame every hour throughout the day, so that I can see how the sun moving across the sky affects the landscape. I have chosen a view which includes buildings and vegetation so that I can see how the moving light will affect each component of the landscape.

5A.M , 30 secs at f11

  In this first image taken at 5a.m you can see it is still completely dark with absolutely no light in the sky at all, hence the extremely long 30 second exposure.

6 A.M, 8 secs at f/11

  As you can see at 6a.m there is now light in the sky, but the sun is still below the hill in the background, hence there are no shadows and the whole picture seems rather flat with a very cool tone, the exposure is still very long, at 8 seconds.
 

7 A.M, 1/20 sec at f/11

  At 7a.m the exposure is much shorter at 1/20 sec, the sun has now risen above the hills and is lighting the tops of the trees. The building is still in shade, the overall tone is still cool, and the image is still quite flat.

8 A.M, 1/180 sec at f/11

  It is hard to say what this picture would look like, as it appears that a cloud is shading this part of the scene, although it looks as though the sun is already fairly high.

9 A.M, 1/250 sec at f/11

  The sun is now giving some form to the landscape, in quite general terms,is it is showing there is a dip in front of the building or is that the shadow of the building.

10 A.M, 1/250 sec at f/11

  This the first point at which the scene appears fully lit, although I think the front of the building is just reflected light. The trees now appear fully formed and the shadows are not too hard.

11 A.M, 1/250 sec at f/11

 The sun is now high in the sky, the shadows are now directly under the trees and are now quite dark. The sun is still not directly lighting the front of the building.

Midday, 1/180 sec at f/11

  It is now midday and the sun is directly above, it is just striking the blinds on the front of the building, so we can expect the sun to set to the right of the scene. The light is now quite hard and colourless.

1 P.M, 1/125 sec at f/11

  As we can see more light is now striking the front of the building with what appears to be a hard white light, the shadows are already beginning to lengthen under the trees.

2 P.M, 1/125 sec at f/11

  The light seems ever so slightly warmer in this picture and there is a touch of colour in the sky.

3 P.M, 1/180 sec at f/11

 There is now a huge change from the previous picture, the sky is now blue and the light is definitely warmer, the shadows under the trees are showing the form of the terracing.

4 P.M, 1/180 sec at f/11

 The light is warmer still, and the shadows have further lengthened, these pictures are a vast improvement over the ones taken in the morning.

5P.M, 1/30 sec at f/11

  The sun has now started to disappear behind the hills facing the building and they are casting a shadow across the bottom of the picture. The light intensity has now dropped, the exposure time has dropped to 1/30 sec, the light is also much warmer and the colour is draining from the sky.

6 P.M, 6 secs at f/11

  The sun has now left the scene and it now almost completely resembles the picture taken at 7 a.m, there are no shadows and the exposure has lengthened to 6 secs.
  This exercise shows that throughout the day there is a very small window when the light is right in any given scene, the best picture in this sequence was taken at 4 p.m. At this time the light had its best colour, the scene was completely lit with a low raking light which helps to give form to the components of the landscape.