Project: The time of the day

Dawn to Dusk:

As the sun moves through the sky, it creates new possibilities for photography. Sunrise, early morning, mid-morning, midday, afternoon, late afternoon and sunset, all have a special character in their light. There is very little that a photographer can do to change the way that natural light appears, except on a small scale and with certain filters. But what you can do is choose the time of day at which you shoot. The main control that a photograph ahs over outdoor lighting is simply to wait. Landscape photographers do this a lot.

Most casual snapshots are taken some time around the middle of the day, between mid-morning and mid-afternoon . The main reason is simply convenience. This is an undemanding time of day to shoot. By the time the causal amateur has woken up, had breakfast and travelled to wherever the photographs will be taken, the sun is already fairly high. On top of this, taking photographs under bright lighting is easier for shooting. But midday light, whether sunny or cloudy, is not necessary the  most interesting or attractive. For one thing, it is over familiar and by definition, not special. If you are planning on learning how to use natural light, you will need to work more in the early morning or late afternoon.

The intensity of light

Between dawn and dusk, brightness varies. The sun seems brighter when it is higher in the sky, while at sunrise and sunsets, sunlight has to pass through thicker layers of atmosphere.

Clouds, haze and mist darken it. In the shade or indoors, there is usually much less light. To most people these variations are of little importance because our eyes adapt easily from light to dark condition. But for photographers the exact brightness is crucially important.

First, we need a simple method of measuring brightness and a scale on which to map the results. Nowadays, all cameras have a built-in light meter, and by default it automatically adjusts to exposure given to the sensor or film, to match the brightness of the scene.

Most camera display this information in the two units that are useful for photography, shutter speed, and aperture, in the form of a fraction of a second, and an F-Number.

The starting point is the sensitivity that the camera is set to, and the measurement for this is an ISO number. This measurement of sensitivity to light was taken over from film, and a ‘normal’ sensitivity, adequate for shooting in normally bright daylight, is in the region of ISO 100-200. More sensitive settings are higher numbers than these, and can reach several or many thousands in professional cameras.

Some digital camera can display the exposure in the form of a graph called a Histogram. You can also find these on image editing programmes such as Photoshop.

If you were to take meter readings for the same outdoor scene throughout one day, you would see that the brightness increases during the morning, then levels off. This is because the light does not go on increasing as the sun rises. Once the sun reaches 40 degrees above the horizon, this is as bright as it will ever be. The brightness with then decrease towards sunset and night.