WORK WITH LIGHT
Alter your style for each time of day and embrace lighting characteristics
One of the great qualities of urban environments is that the densely populated scenes very easily take on new appearances as the light changes, either reflecting or absorbing colour and tone from the sky. in modern cities, the predominance of glass results in light ‘bouncing’ between buildings, altering its softness and hue. it is possible to shoot the same scene at sunrise, midday and sunset and produce an almost entirely unique atmosphere. Meanwhile, after dark, a city can adopt an otherworldly style as the artificial light from within buildings produces vibrant contrast against the low-light surroundings. However, each lighting condition presents its own set of exposure challenges, requiring the photographer to recognise where problems may arise and adapt their composition and settings to compensate.
at dawn the biggest advantage is the frequent lack of traffic and people – this is generally when city streets are at their quietest. there is also good colour contrast, with plenty of cool and warm colours present in the sky to blend with or stand out from the artificial street and interior lights. Unfortunately you may also find many building lights are not on in these early hours, presenting backlighting challenges, resulting in loss of shadow detail. a potential solution is to use this to our advantage and intentionally underexpose foreground detail to generate silhouette shapes, highlighting the outline of iconic skylines. alternatively we can shoot with the rising sun behind us to pick out surface detail and reflections.
at midday we experience good contrast, deep blue skies and excellent opportunities to use the reflective properties of modern building materials. the strong lighting can introduce exposure and over-polarisation difficulties, while the top-down light often makes it difficult to pick out texture. consider using deep contrast to produce punchy monochrome images and use the extended Low isO setting on your camera to maximise shadow detail, while being mindful of highlight loss.
When it comes to shooting at night, the black sky can create a bottom-heavy composition, with little to ‘weigh’ down the top area. try to compose out as much negative space as possible and wait for the clouds to pick up the colours of the city lights, for better balance in the frame.
“We can shoot with the rising sun behind us to pick out surface
detail and reflections”