Gentle Light, or More Sugar Please

I’m totally attracted to gentle light. What do I mean by that? Well, jump on instagram or Facebook, search for some photos, and take a look at the intensity of colour you see. So many photos are excessively saturated. Here is an example of a lovely composition that I think is ruined by heavy handed use of saturation. Some people love this, but I don’t. It is eye catching, and certainly grabs the attention when seen on a small screen, but it does’t look real to me.

Below is an image I made at a place called Tenby Point, south of Melbourne on Western Port Bay. This is currently on display at the Maitland International Salon of Photography, and I particularly like it not only for its simplicity and its strong geometric (almost graphical) structure, but also because of the subtlety of tones in the image.

This is what I refer to as ‘gentle light’—the kind of light that you see as the day dwindles into night, pastel hues that capture the actual colours we see in the sky.

Let’s look at another image. This is a side-by-side, with the image I like (before) and the image that probably would get more likes on instagram (after). Structurally, the image is really dead simple. A strong leading line with warm tones splitting three cooler zones, the deep sea to the left, the vermillion pool to the right and the dawn sky above. The image on the left is the colour that I saw with my eye. The colour on the right is bold and brassy and vivid and (frankly) the visual equivalent of too much sugar. Which do you prefer? Sickly sweet or just a touch of the cane juice?

Shakespeare and Photography

To Be, Or Not To Be...

         W.S.

I might also have called this ‘colour or black & white’, but Shakespeare rocks, so I went with the current title.

Nick Melidonis recently wrote in Better Photography 89 that “stripping away colour is the first step towards embracing the abstract”. Colour is intoxicating. If you jump on Instagram or 500px and look at the photographs, you’ll quickly see that vibrant colour (sometimes saturation) makes images more appealing. As human beings, we are predisposed to colour like we are predisposed to sugar and fat. 

But colour is also a distraction. Black and white imagery (good black and white imagery) is sustained by good composition. Without that it has nothing else to hang its hat on. That doesn’t mean you should only shoot in black and white: shoot colour and then convert. But shooting only in black and white does focus the mind on shape and form, as Richard White suggests in Better Photography 85.  

So now for the comparison—a test of sorts. I’ve placed here two images, both created from the same RAW file. The first (before) is the colour image that I took. The second (after) is its black and white ‘twin’, if I can use that conceit.  

So which is it: to be, or not to be...? Does the image on the right reveal things that the image on the left doesn’t? Or does it fall short in some way because the composition isn't strong enough? Leave your comments or advice...