Light through the day

For this exercise, I took photographs of Guildford Castle, which is a stone tower that stands on a mound surrounded by gardens, close to where I live. I envisaged that this would catch the sunlight at most times of the day and I chose a viewpoint from which it would catch both the morning and evening sun. The photographs were taken over several days between 15th to 21st September.

Guildford Castle 8 a.m.

Guildford Castle 8.30 am

Guildford Castle 11.30 am

Guildford Castle 2.30 pm

Guildford Castle 5 pm

Guildford Castle 5.20 pm

Guildford Castle 5.40 pm

The practical issue involved with taking this sequence was not so much keeping the same viewpoint and focal length. I had selected a position standing just inside a gateway to the gardens which was easy to remember.

The greater challenge was keeping reasonably consistent exposures in photographs taken several days apart. I generally use my camera set to "pattern" (that is matrix) metering. However, it took time for me to realize that focussing on the foreground shadow areas was causing overexposure of the castle walls. After the first few photographs, I made sure that the metering location was in an area of sunlight so that the colours and detail of the stonework of the tower were not blown out.

The white balance was set to sunlight for each of these photographs except for the second photograph in the series which was close to the sunlight colour temperature.

Observations

I framed the photographs to show the mound on which the castle stands, which meant including a part of the gardens in the foreground. I nevertheless intended that the main subject of the photograph should be the size and grandeur of the tower.

For an architectural subject like the tower, frontal lighting does not emphasize the form of the surfaces of the tower. These surfaces appear to be quite plain in both the photographs taken in mid-day light.

Comparing the photographs taken in the early morning and late afternoon sunlight, the morning light photographs are more interesting:-

• The side light is casting a vertical shadow up the edge of right hand stone corner of the tower as well as vertical shadow up a central pilaster below the window. The evening light is less visually interesting as the left hand surface of the tower does not have such prominent shadows.
• Furthermore, the contrasting light inside the window frames on both faces of the tower make these features stand out in the morning light. In the evening light on the other hand, the windows on the shaded surface are barely visible as there is no similar contrast.

I would choose the photograph taken at 8 am as the foreground flower beds are in shadow and the castle tower dominates the scene. (Also in the 8.30 am photo the stone colour is slightly blown out on the sunny face of the tower.)

Conclusions

The main things I learnt from this exercise were:-

• I must not forget to apply the techniques regarding exposure and white balance from the earlier exercises.
• It was useful to compare the sequence of photographs taken throughout the day. It reinforced my experience that the lighting of edges can significantly enhance the visual quality of a photograph.