ethereal: extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world

I feel the past five or six years has been an exploration in high key imagery. I think I have mentioned that I’m keen to go back to exploring darker tones and moods, and I was certainly aware that with my new Harris images, there seemed to be a bit of a return to darker imagery and also a reintroduction of stronger colour.

I think that the light one is working in, should really dictate the kind of images that are produced. In a way, we should consider that like a toolset, different kinds of light provide different things to our imagery, and learning how best to work with all these kinds of light is a skill we all have to work at.

We tend to shoot what we deem beautiful, and as a beginner I would only work with sunrises and sunsets. Most of us just go about responding to what we think beautiful and of course, that is a fine thing to do.

But I am aware that there are qualities of light outwit my normal shooting habits that if I chose to work in them, I might find some new ground, and an appreciation for.

But it is my belief that we have to take one kind of quality of light at a time. For the past while, I have been focussing on very light delicate soft light, foggy misty light. I have stayed away from hard contrasts from a general belief that the light doesn’t work. Yet I have had a few epiphanies over the past decade where I learned that what I thought would not work, does, if approached in the right way.

In short, learning to understand what different kinds of light are providing our imagery is like developing a vocabulary. It takes time to learn new words, and to understand the subtitles of them, and when to use them in our language.

dreich: Scottish (especially of weather) dreary; bleak.

I would not have attempted to shoot this many years ago, and I have received many comments that this image was quite different for me. I think that was partly due to the green colour (I rarely shoot green, in case you hadn’t noticed?), but also because of it’s dark, dare I say it dreary, bleak mood.

I think I’m playing more in different kinds of light. It’s good to exercise my vocabulary, or indeed to even discover that I’ve learned a new word or two: those images that work but wouldn’t ordinarily be the kind of light you would choose to work in.

We all have our own unique vocabulary of light. I think I know what mine is, and how far it reaches. Question is, do you?