The Church of Light by Gord Barker

    It's the end of June and the Summer season is in full swing. The tiger lilies (one of my favourite flowers) are blooming almost everywhere. We've already survived our first heat wave. The days are long and the light during the day is intense. Sometimes too intense!

    

    When you think about it, good photography is really about the appreciation of light and the ability to use that light in the presentation of a subject. When you've been at it as long as I have, that appreciation of light becomes almost second nature. I can't tell you how many times I've stepped outside and said, "Wow! Look at the light!" Sometimes I work in reverse. The light will be amazing and I will frantically look for a subject or scene to utilize it. For a photographer, the appreciation of good light and it's interplay with a subject is key to making appealing photographs. Second to that appreciation, is the ability to utilize the photographic equipment at hand to capture the nature of that light with what is hopefully an interesting or beautiful subject. But the light comes first. Without it, photographic imaging is null and void.

    I can almost hear my readers asking, "So, old grey bearded photo freak, what exactly is  defined as good light?"

    

 The answer, quite simply, is any light that enhances the subject being portrayed in the photograph. For example, the hard specular light of a clear sky at mid day is usually not good for portraiture. It produces hard shadows in the eye sockets and under the nose on the face. The light of late afternoon or the softer light of a slightly overcast day is usually better for that application. However that same hard light can serve to emphasize the graphic nature of a building's architecture quite well. In essence, there's really no such thing as bad light, there's just bad application of the light that is available. And in photography, there's always a work-around.

    It was photographer Jim Richardson who said, "If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff."  I would add, "Stand in front of more interesting stuff lit with really great light!"

           ...more later