Exercise: How the Space Changes With Light.

Exercise: How the space changes with light.

Dover Castle should need no introduction and I am not going to give it one other than to say that it sits high on the Downs above the town. 

It is only ten minutes drive from my house and seemed ideal for this exercise.

I wanted to see what effect that the sun would have on the Castle through the day and from two locations roughly opposite each other. I watched the weather forecasts and saw that today,  the 4th. March, would bring clear sunny conditions.  The day before the shoot I scouted out two likely positions, one to the east and one to the west.  

Olympus E3. 50-200 lens.  Tripod.

I present my pictures in pairs; the shot from the east first.  They were taken at similar times.

Before 7am.

The warm early sun is picking up the sandstone beautifully.  The texture of the Castle is rather flattened by the full on light and the long lens I was using.

The scene from the west is very different.  The low sun to the left of shot is allowing some colour on the left side of the Castle and giving a little texturing but the rest of the structure is picking up the cold blue of the clear sky.

At about 11am.

The sun is high in the sky and hitting the South side of the Castle full on with sharp shadows and highlighting the Castle's many angles.

The sun is now high and to the right of shot with almost none falling on this part of the structure.  This has put the Castle in near silhouette with only the outline visible.  There is more detail available to Photoshop but I wanted the picture to appear as taken.

At about 2pm.

In this one the sun is now high up but the other side of the Castle and giving a similar effect to the last picture.  The is little sign of direct sun light except for some roof areas.  It looks misty but I think this was a feature of shooting into the sun.

The sun is now directly to the right of the Castle as we view it.  It is highlighting the battlements in the foreground and is hitting the top of the grass bank.  It gives the Castle a purposeful and powerful look.

 Between 5pm and 5.30pm.

As can be seen the sun is very low in the sky and is throwing the Castle in to silhouette.  I took a number of pictures of this scene.  In some I included the sun and in some I excluded it.  Despite the slight lens flare I went with this one as the one that best represented what I could see.

The scene from the other side was very different.  I was hoping that the orange colour of the sun would put more warmth into the shot but it was not to be.  The angle of the sun hitting the side of the Castle gives some nice modelling with a little bit of colour.  

This exercise confirmed what I imagined would happen; the best pictures would be the late afternoon ones using the setting sun.