Looking for Light

There are times when the weather isn't always the best, but sometimes those days can be a blessing in disguise. On the day I photographed these images it was a wet, miserable day. I was down about the weather because I had a model, makeup artist and a class I was teaching along with a friend in Kyoto, Japan. The entire time we were wondering if we should go to the location but decided it was best to just go and see if the rain stopped or became worse. We were lucky! The rain never really stopped but it became more of a light drizzle and it kept people away from an area which would have been crowded with tourist normally.

The location was a bamboo forrest in Kyoto, Japan and the light rain, or mist, gave the shots a quality we would not have had if the sun was out in full force. It was one of my favorite days and we had the location almost all to ourselves for hours. A great day.

When shooting on an overcast day you still must look for the direction of the light. As you become more familiar with light you can easily see this, but at first it may seem hard. If you are new to this use your camera to take a meter reading in one direction and then turn your subject around and meter from the other side. This will show you the difference in exposure and make you keenly aware of where your light is coming from. The other thing you must be aware of when working on overcast days is that the light can go up a stop or two and you won't notice it, so always be aware of your light. My assistants are always surprised when I announce that the light is up or down on an overcast day because they can't see the change yet, but the more you study light the easier it will become. The next time you are out on an overcast day watch the light and notice how often it goes up or down. The more you do this the better your eyes will become at noticing small changes in light.

For these images I shot at ISO 800. My F stop was 2.0 @ 1/40th of a second shutter. Very low light conditions but it also added to the mood and feel of these shots. I love shooting wide open at times and focusing on my subjects and letting the background blow out. For these shots I used a 35mm 1.4 lens. Since I was shooting so slow I didn't want to use a heavier zoom lens and it would affect the sharpness of my images and the fix lenses are usually sharper. Zoom lenses have become better over the years but I still love my fixed lenses.

Always Dream Big!