Welcome to our P52! This project is designed to get you out with your camera once a week in a meaningful way. Each week I will post a prompt for you to consider. The prompts are merely suggestions, and you are free to shoot off topic if you wish. All images posted must be taken by you, be safe for work, and be taken with this project in mind. Please do not post archive photos. For a further discussion of the guidelines, please refer to this thread, and you can find the previous weeks linked there if you missed them. Feel free to join in at any time of the year, and you may go back to missed weeks if you still wish to participate.
Week 27: Pocket of Light
![main.jpg]( "main.jpg")
Friends! Can you believe we are halfway through the year?? That’s insane to me. At any rate, here we are, and this week we are going to chat about one of my favorite exercises - finding and utilizing pockets of light.
We probably all know that the word photograph means to “draw with light.” I think a lot of times, in a lot of scenes, light is the afterthought. We focus on colors, shapes, emotions; and all those things are also important in a photograph. But when we focus on the light itself, and how it helps to shape our subjects, no matter how mundane, our photographs become elevated in a way, and even boring things take on a new meaning.
Above is my pile of shoes. I always have a pile of shoes in the mudroom, mostly because we don’t wear shoes in our house and I’m not organized enough to keep all my shoes in my closet at all times. Shoes are not a particularly exciting subject for most of us (unless you are perhaps a teenage boy with a sneaker obsession). But here, in the soft light, you get a glimpse of who I am more - someone who wears sandals in the summer, someone who doesn’t untie her sneakers when she takes them off. You see a stuffed animal in the background, indicative of a dog or small child in the house. The image is helped with a narrow depth of field. But the quiet light highlighting shapes and shadows tells a different story than one in brighter, flatter light.
I started a light study project late last fall when I was lamenting to a group of friends that I had nothing new to shoot. One of my friends suggested a light study, and while my first inclination was to say, no I don’t have good light in my house, I decided to see where it would take me. Light studies are one of those things that you read about, but rarely complete. I didn’t have any real end goal when I started the project, but I have been surprised to find small pockets of light here and there that I never noticed. When you work with these small pockets, the subject becomes highlighted in the light, and the rest of the scene falls to shadow. It immediately directs your viewer’s eyes to the subject, as we are always drawn first to the brightest area in image.
![2023-07-03_0001.jpg]( "2023-07-03_0001.jpg")
Like the full sun and window light lessons, we will want to be sure to meter for the highlights so that we don’t blow out any details.
![2023-07-03_0002.jpg]( "2023-07-03_0002.jpg")
![2023-07-03_0003.jpg]( "2023-07-03_0003.jpg")
Your pockets of light are not relegated to indoors only and I encourage you to find whatever you can on your daily walks. Woods are great as there are often random openings for the light to spill through, and even the city offers excellent pockets as light gets blocked by buildings, although I don’t personally have any city images to share.
![2023-07-03_0004.jpg]( "2023-07-03_0004.jpg")
You can photograph just the patches of light you see, and make the light itself the subject of your image, or you can have a person or object in your light patch as the subject. Your light need not be overly powerful or full sun, as evidenced by my shoe photo; just anywhere that there is a clear fall off from light to dark will work as a pocket of light.
![2023-07-03_0005.jpg]( "2023-07-03_0005.jpg")
This week is a bit more freeform than leading lines, so don't think too hard and just go have fun.
Week 27: Pocket of Light
Friends! Can you believe we are halfway through the year?? That’s insane to me. At any rate, here we are, and this week we are going to chat about one of my favorite exercises - finding and utilizing pockets of light.
We probably all know that the word photograph means to “draw with light.” I think a lot of times, in a lot of scenes, light is the afterthought. We focus on colors, shapes, emotions; and all those things are also important in a photograph. But when we focus on the light itself, and how it helps to shape our subjects, no matter how mundane, our photographs become elevated in a way, and even boring things take on a new meaning.
Above is my pile of shoes. I always have a pile of shoes in the mudroom, mostly because we don’t wear shoes in our house and I’m not organized enough to keep all my shoes in my closet at all times. Shoes are not a particularly exciting subject for most of us (unless you are perhaps a teenage boy with a sneaker obsession). But here, in the soft light, you get a glimpse of who I am more - someone who wears sandals in the summer, someone who doesn’t untie her sneakers when she takes them off. You see a stuffed animal in the background, indicative of a dog or small child in the house. The image is helped with a narrow depth of field. But the quiet light highlighting shapes and shadows tells a different story than one in brighter, flatter light.
I started a light study project late last fall when I was lamenting to a group of friends that I had nothing new to shoot. One of my friends suggested a light study, and while my first inclination was to say, no I don’t have good light in my house, I decided to see where it would take me. Light studies are one of those things that you read about, but rarely complete. I didn’t have any real end goal when I started the project, but I have been surprised to find small pockets of light here and there that I never noticed. When you work with these small pockets, the subject becomes highlighted in the light, and the rest of the scene falls to shadow. It immediately directs your viewer’s eyes to the subject, as we are always drawn first to the brightest area in image.
Like the full sun and window light lessons, we will want to be sure to meter for the highlights so that we don’t blow out any details.
Your pockets of light are not relegated to indoors only and I encourage you to find whatever you can on your daily walks. Woods are great as there are often random openings for the light to spill through, and even the city offers excellent pockets as light gets blocked by buildings, although I don’t personally have any city images to share.
You can photograph just the patches of light you see, and make the light itself the subject of your image, or you can have a person or object in your light patch as the subject. Your light need not be overly powerful or full sun, as evidenced by my shoe photo; just anywhere that there is a clear fall off from light to dark will work as a pocket of light.
This week is a bit more freeform than leading lines, so don't think too hard and just go have fun.
