The Light Is the Thing...

ggbutcher · October 18, 2021, 1:43am

Returned today from a stay in a cabin at our favorite state park, Mueller, Colorado, USA. In Colorado this past couple of weeks, the aspen leaves have started turning gold, then red, before falling for the winter, and the normally green-clad mountains take on a patchwork look. For my taste however, it’s not the color so much as the light shining through it in the early morning just after sunrise. So I woke up early one morning for a walkabout, hoping to catch some “autumn translucence”…

I do a thing I call “grab landscapes” during these walks, highlight-weighted metering, a high ISO to compel a short shutter speed, and aperture-preferred mode, so I can concentrate on the surroundings and how they fill the frame. Most of my PlayRaws are from this sort of shooting. This particular morning I was drawn to a side trail where the aspens were numerous, and the imminent sunbreak over PIkes Peak promised a lot of interesting light. What I ran into in addition was an abundance of golden grasses making swirling patterns under the trees. And, as the sun rose into the sky, lovely streaks of luminance where the shafts of sunlight reached the swirls. Here’s one of my grabs:

Looking through the proofs back at the cabin, it was the tufts of grass at the bottom that caught my eye. This sort of pattern makes for good monochrome in my experience, but these were cut off from their full form by my hasty capture. So were the bottoms of the aspen trunks to the right. Wanting to get the best capture, I set out to re-create it a bit more deliberately. I got the capture time from the exif, 8:04AM, so I planned to be at the same spot at that time the next morning. And that time, with a tripod and ISO 100.

Next morning, I found the scene pretty much the same as the previous day. With all the light, I got decent shutter speeds even at base ISO, but I kept to the tripod to keep things sharp as possible. I also dialed in +0.3 and +0.7 EV for a couple, just to see how the camera’s highlight weighted metering mode handled the scene.

Back at the cabin, I reviewed the proofs and selected one for monochrome-ing. I changed out the demosaic, added a grayscale tool just past the tone curve, and in it changed grayscale channel proportions to light up the red. Here’s the final rendition:

I had not previously chased a particular image this way, helped me appreciate what real landscape photographers go through.

Here are some other captures from these morning walkabouts:

Anyway, the light is the thing…

paperdigits · October 18, 2021, 2:24am

The end result is quite nice! I like the way the grass arks though the tree. The division of space is interesting, as is the most prominent thing, the v trunk, being dark.

I think you also have a real winner with the golden aspen leaves, but it needs a crop either to 4:5 or a square. There are three clumps of leaves, and the way they move down the frame from the top is really nice.

Chasing a location or frame is interesting, especially if you can’t get back in a short time frame like you did. The way things change in nature is pretty crazy, and the more I attempt to chase locations, the more I appreciate the small details of a scene, as those are first to change.

ggbutcher · October 18, 2021, 2:38am

That one was a real “grab”, the backlit leaves caught my eye, I remember just swinging the camera up and squeezing off the shot as I walked down the road. Here’s a close-to-square crop:

I was very fortunate, the weather forecast was for snow later the second day. I thought I would wake up to an overcast day, but no, same partly-cloudy as the day before. The weather did roll in later that day, “sneet” - snow balled into little pellets.

Looking through the proofs, found one I hadn’t noticed before that just epitomizes the light:

afre · October 18, 2021, 2:57am

What fun (with the light and framing)! Thanks for sharing!

Jade_NL · October 18, 2021, 6:13am

Those are nice Glenn.

Love the B&W version. I’m probably not telling you anything you haven’t heard/experienced before if I say that colour can be a distraction.

You were lucky… Nature most often doesn’t do replays

I like the second edit/crop of the Aspen.

Soupy · October 18, 2021, 9:35am

Where I’m from we call that drought

Nice grabs. Looks like a beautiful place to walk around.

ggbutcher · October 18, 2021, 1:14pm

It is, but not in the grandeur-ous sort of way for which most folk come to visit Colorado. I’m finding that it’s not the place itself, but what it does with the light that makes for compelling scenes for imaging. Right now, I’m enamored with what trees do to light, but I think there’s similar fodder in most locations, if you look for it. Thing is, although high-noon filtering through a forest canopy can do it, my personal experience pulls me to the time around sunrise. The shadows from the low-inclination source of light make really interesting compositional elements, and the mists made from the morning condensation offer really neat translucence components.

Yeah, I could easily in a day drive to Maroon Bells and fight with the other photographers for the perfect spot to make the upteenth image of a grand display, but I’m really finding satisfaction with searching out the compelling compositions in the (relatively) ordinary spaces…

ggbutcher · October 18, 2021, 1:21pm

Y’know, I did it on my tablet, and didn’t particularly care for it. However, this morning looking at it on my larger desktop display with a bit of space around it, it does look better.

Soupy · October 19, 2021, 1:05am

Yes I agree wholeheartedly. I’ll almost never take a landscape shot if it isn’t early morning or late afternoon. At that hour, you can find nice scenes in nearly any otherwise mundane location. Modern photography, or at least those that sell, often has a bit of a fixation on the grand and epic, but if you look at old master paintings, many of them will simply capture something poetic in a simple scene - the beauty is all to do with the light, colour and composition.