Big Sur Coastline: Line and Light

Our Christmas gift to ourselves in 2009 was a leisurely trip up California’s Central Coastline.  The late fall and early winter months are the most beautiful along this coastline.  The light is subtle and the weather is either raw and stormy or drop-dead gorgeous.  We got lucky.  Our scheduled drive from San Simeon to Monterey, taking in the Big Sur Coastline, was scheduled for New Year’s Eve morning.  We got lucky.  We hit the drop-dead gorgeous window in the weather fronts.

We stopped at all of the famous view spots, including this one just north of the Coast Gallery, just before entering the Carmel area.  These are the moody cliffs of paintings and many photographs, with distant hills fading into the background or under the fog.  When we were there, the cliffs were also badly back-lit.  As is so often the case, we didn’t have the choice of coming back later in the afternoon, so I had to deal with the light as it was.  I aimed the light meter for the neutral greys in the center of the hills, moving the focal point over about six frames to get what I wanted.  This is the only way to deal with this kind of difficult lighting situation.  The beauty of digital is that you can delete the ones you don’t want.  I shot below the sun line, but still have a few sun spots in the frame, which I will eventually stamp out in photoshop.  The clouds cooperated by creating an angled line pointing directly at the cliffs, creating the lead line I wanted.  The natural angle of the cliffs is an angle and not a straight line, so that also worked with me.  I just had to stand in an area of the parking lot that emphasized the line and showed off the repeating pattern of the hills.   Happy shooting, folks.  May 2010 bring you many joys with your camera.

Fortunately, the spotlight was on the presentation.  I turned off the flash, found the ISO settings – those control the light sensitivity of the digital flash card –  and set it for a high sensitivity level,  pushed my telephoto out to the maximum to get the reading and frame the shot, and went for it.

The light sensitivity reading was high enough to cause the camera to set a fast shutter speed.  That froze the action.  There was enough light on the people surrounding the presentation to give a good sense of what was going on.  The internal light meter in the camera read the light on the demonstration, so that stood out.

In order to do this, you need to find three topics in your camera manual and learn how to use them:  the icon settings – chosing one that will give you a fast shutter speed, such as sports or portrait, the telephoto controls, and the ISO controls in the menu options.  Those three options will allow you to take control of your camera.

One day, our guides offered a walk through a valley and along a river called Moose Creek.  As we walked along this gorgeous river valley scene, I looked for ways to show it off in a photograph.  The first problem to solve was positioning the river and mountains so they looked dynamic.  The second problem was managing the light so both the detail in the river as well as in the valley would be present in the photograph.  This was the early 2000’s and digital cameras were not yet at the quality I wanted for a price I wanted to pay, so I was shooting film.  That meant I couldn’t try and check my results and then try again if I didn’t get it.  We also weren’t coming back any time soon. 

Lines and angles in a photograph give it a dynamic feel.  I positioned myself so the river created one predominate angled line, positioned against the folding angles of the mountains in the background.  I used a landscape setting, wanting the whole photograph to be in focus, but also needing a fast enough shutter speed to get some freezing of the action in the flowing river.  I trained the light meter and focus area on the green of the hills in the background, with the objective of blending the light from the sky with the light from the dark green to achieve a good average.  Halfway down on the shutter button, hold it, and reframe to get the angle I wanted.  I took several shots to ensure that I had one good one.  This was it.

As my husband walked down to the lake, I took a few steps back and surveyed the image in front of me.  He had stopped by one of the trees to get a wide angle view of the lake.  I told him to stay put, and took my reading off the mist rising against the mountains, hoping to get enough detail of the lake to show the mist as well as silhouette the darker parts of the scene.  My strategy was to blend the exposure readings of the mountains in the background with the light from the rising mist.  I had learned how to do this in an introductory class I took from the shop that sold me the camera, and this was one of my first practice shots. I wanted my husband in the shot.  I felt his presence would add interest and character and deminsion the lake itself.

The strategies worked, but I didn’t find out how well until I got home and had the film developed.  This trip was in 1983, long before digital cameras were even in the development process.  I still have the enlargement of this print on my wall. 

Remember, no matter how simple or complex the camera, it is just a light box.  The lens lets the light from the scene into the box and records it on the light sensitive mechanism in the camera.  In 1983, the light sensitive mechanism was film.  Today, for most people who grab a camera, it is an electronic chip or disk.    It doesn’t really matter which you use.  The basic principles of light management are the same.

Still, we were here, and I wasn’t going home without a few shots.  As we walked on the over look above Fort Mason, approaching the Bridge, I began to see the photograph emerge.  I used my telephoto to focus and take the light reading on the brown buildings at the Fort, and then, holding the shutter button half way down, reframed to include part of the bridge and the water.  The fog is there, in all its glory, creeping through the Gate and into the Bay.  The mood is somber, but the detail shows up and it tells at least one story of the weather in San Francisco.

The key to this problem is taking the exposure reading deliberately on a medium dark neutral element of the photograph.  This technique evens out the light reading for the camera, and will show detail in the structures in the image.  If I had wanted the Bridge and Fort to silhouette, I would have left the camera on a wide angle and shot.  The camera would have picked up the ambient light, and the Bridge and Fort would have been in shadow. 

Decide what you want before you shoot, and then control your camera.

The fog comes in many forms and sweeps across the Bridge in many patterns.  On this particular day, we were approaching San Francisco from the Marin overlooks along the Bay shore and could see the fog creeping northward.  The north tower was till in sunlight.  I wanted the color of the bridge and the Marin Headlands, and so I used the telephoto lens to frame down and pointed my little focusing and light meter square at the brown hills, held the shutter button half way down to hold the reading, and then recomposed the shot.  The results showed the fog moving northward, but retained the color of the Bridge and the headlands, and also picked up some of the sunlight illuminating the fog and turning it into a rosy glow.

The important part of this is determing what you want the final shot to look like.  If I had wanted the bridge and headlands to be dark, I would have pointed the metering poing at the fog itself.  The fog would have provided a white background against a dark Bridge and hill outline.

I saw the wonderful full-length human sculptures made from wood and wanted to get a shot.  All of the gallery lighting is ceiling spotlights, which provide lots of light, but also lots of glare.  The sculptures I wanted were in the middle of the gallery, surrounded by these ceiling lights.  I walked around the case, looking for the best, least-interferring angle.  I finally decided it was impossible to avoid the lights and glare, so looked for the angle that had the least amount of light hitting the sculpture itself and put as much as possible in the background.

I had already turned off my flash and set the camera for a mid-range light sensitivity reading, known as the ISO reading.  I used 400 – a mid-range setting, because the light in the gallery was good.

The results weren’t great, but they were acceptable.  I could still see the figure in some detail, and the lights were mostly in the background.

  I could, of course, stamp out the lights in a photo editing program, but lots of photoshop work isn’t what I want to do.  I would rather get the best shot I can out of my camera.  It’s a challenge sometimes, but a little thought and observation does make it possible.

Lake Louise, Banff: Light

My husband and I had arrived at Lake Louise, Banff National Park, in the middle of the afternoon.   This iconic lake and glacier was still dramatic, but the light was coming from the back of the glacier (known as a “back lit” shot) and the effect was to flatten the effect of the Glacier.  Still, we weren’t coming back in the morning, so I had to make the best of it.  Here is the third idea for how to handle bad light situations.

I wandered around the front of the lake and off to the side, slightly off-center from the scene.  I noticed the light reflecting on the lake, creating a line that led directly from the mountains to the rocks on the shore.  There were trees on the right side, which I could use to give the frame some definition.  The glacier itself was minimized, but the angle and brilliance of the light had a dramatic quality that brought out the ambiance I was trying to capture.  I aimed my little square light meter in the middle of my lens at the glacier in the distance and shot.  The sun was coming into the lens of the camera, so I had to shoot low to avoid sunspots, and still couldn’t eliminate all of them.  Such is life.  We can’t always control everything.

Kayaks at Lake Louise

My husband and I had arrived at Lake Louise too late in the afternoon to take advantage of good morning light.  We were stuck with light coming from the back of this iconic scene, which flattened the light on the glacier.  After working with the light from the front of the lake, I decided to take a walk around to the side to see what I could do.  Here is the second idea for how to handle bad light situations.

My stroll didn’t move the sun much to the front – we were too late in the day and it was still off to the back, but my little jaunt had moved the direction slightly to the left side of the frame.  I spotted the boats and moved down a little more toward them.  Aha!  The front of the canoes pointed at the glacier and created angle lines that brought a dynamic feel to the scene.  Even though the light on the glacier and mountains was still flat, the light was working on the boats and the scene came a little more to life.

Lake Louise, Banff, Glacier Close-Up

The Canadian Rockies are always breathtaking, and even though the glaciers are receding, they are incredible.  My husband and I had arrived at this Canadian icon, Lake Louise, in Banff National Park, in time for a late lunch, and were now admiring the lake and the glacier.  The light was coming from behind the glacier and the effect was to flatten the dramatic effect of the ice-filled valley, but I still wanted one shot to show its massive size with something to give it perspective.

Off in the distance, I could see people rowing boats against the far edges of the lake.  I used my telephoto lens to frame down on the glacier and bring out the dots in the water.  To compensate for the direction of the light,  I used the light metering square in the middle of my lens to great the glacier itself.  The reading darkened the surrounding hills, but brought out what light there was on the ice.  The tiny dots of people in the lake brought an element of interest and enhanced the massive lake and surrounding mountains.  If we could have come back in the morning, the shot would have been better, but that’s the story of traveling photography.  You have to find ways to make the best of what is presented to you.

Stay tuned for the next two blogs for more ideas about how to manage bad light situations.