This assignment was very educational in teaching the importance and impact lighting has on your photographs. The assignment involved three ‘natural lighting’ tasks: silhouettes, “wafts of light’’ and self portraits. I discovered taking photographs with low light could be a challenge. Because of the unpredictable nature of natural light I went through a phase of trial and error, until I discovered the best possible time of day to take my photographs. I found that the most favorable time of day to optimize natural light was early morning and late afternoon. Because the sun is lower in the sky and casts softer shadows, mornings and afternoons had the softest light and created ideal settings for this assignment. I also discovered that because of the limited time frame I worked with, there reaches a certain point when the natural light source either floods your photographs (in the morning when the sun is too high in the sky) or you lose your natural light source altogether (setting sun and impending darkness). It is a constant race against time. The natural light source from the setting sun goes down quickly in the fall and what you had your camera set for five minutes ago is not the same settings required with darker skies. There were a few locations that I was too late (both morning and afternoon) to get the natural light that I wanted, so I made it a point to get to these locations before the soft natural light was gone. This was particularly important when doing my silhouette photography. One minute the subject had almost the perfect amount of light and the next it was dark. When dealing with “wafts of light”, I found that going into tall stands of trees allowed more time to deal with natural light sources. When you are in tall wooded areas, they are well protected from the harsh sun but still allow enough light to illuminate the setting. Because of the cold weather I chose not to do my portraits outside, but decided to take advantage of the natural light coming in the side of two windows. One of the windows had blinds so I utilized the window coverings to cast alternating strands of light and shadows. I found that the further away I was from the window (and light source) resulted in a much darker contrast between the two sides of my face. The other window had no blinds and imparted a softer casting of light onto my face. I had to use a really wide aperture to get enough lighting on my face when the lighting was almost too soft. As well, it was particularly challenging, setting up the tripod and self-timer for my self-portraits, in addition to posing.
In terms of camera settings, each image required a different combination of settings. Across all of my images shutter speed ranged from 1/100 to 1/2000, ISO ranged from 100 to 1600 and the f-stop value (which had the smallest variations) ranged from a value of 2.8 to 5.6. As I mentioned previously, I believe this variation stemmed from the ever-changing lighting conditions I had while shooting. With the light changing so rapidly during the morning and evenings when I was photographing, it required me to continually adjust and experiment with my camera settings to get the ideal final images.
In terms of camera settings, each image required a different combination of settings. Across all of my images shutter speed ranged from 1/100 to 1/2000, ISO ranged from 100 to 1600 and the f-stop value (which had the smallest variations) ranged from a value of 2.8 to 5.6. As I mentioned previously, I believe this variation stemmed from the ever-changing lighting conditions I had while shooting. With the light changing so rapidly during the morning and evenings when I was photographing, it required me to continually adjust and experiment with my camera settings to get the ideal final images.