Let the light take over
Sometimes it pays to take chances with light and let it guide you
Afew years ago, on these pages, I wrote about treating light as a commodity – as an almost tangible element in a photograph, one that in some way stands apart from even what’s supposed to be the subject. There’s no doubt that, in many areas of photography, the quality of light and your handling of it can make or break the shot. Never more so, in fact, than in a studio, where you actually have to construct lighting from scratch. This is why great studio photographers stand head and shoulders above the average. But let’s stick to the real, uncontrollable world, where, on occasion, light can take over the shoot – if you choose to allow it and know how to manage its more interesting quirks.
You might wonder what this has to do with raising questions in a picture. It’s because when lighting effects take over – meaning when you choose to make them the whole purpose of the picture – then the actual subject takes something of a back seat, making it more ambiguous or uncertain. Here’s an example….
The assignment was a long and mixed one, shooting for a book called Spirit of Asia that featured the most sacred sites of
the continent, from the high plateau of Tibet, eastward to Japan. This location was actually the furthest west, a day’s drive beyond even Mount Kailash in Tibet’s Ngari province, called Tirthapuri. These are hot springs at well over 4000m, and sacred to Tibetans. As the sun gradually lowered on a cold, sparkling clear afternoon, I was torn between shooting with it towards the colourfully dressed pilgrims, or towards it as the steam rose over the hot springs. I did both, but shooting into the light seemed to have the most promise for atmosphere. A few pilgrims climbed up onto the hot
spring terraces early on, but were unclear in a way that wasn’t satisfying. By the time the sun was close to setting, though, the hot springs were empty. Here was a case when I knew I had fantastic light and wanted some figures to walk into the frame and complete what I had in my mind’s eye. But no one did, which was frustrating at the time, but I shot anyway, and of course it was a different shot, and not at all documentary, which is what I was originally aiming for.
It became all about light, with the added question of what the structures are (the answer: mainly prayer flags). Fairly predictably, the shot chosen by the publishers of Spirit of Asia was the earlier one with pilgrims. Later I published my book, Capturing Light, with a different publisher, they chose the glowing shot out of many as the frontispiece…