Oh, to have a few minutes or even hours at one’s disposal in one of the world’s great cities, with a camera on hand, and great light…. As you know, I hardly ever leave home without my camera. That day, in London, I had my Canon 5D II and Zeiss ZE 35 f:1.4, and I hit the tourist trail:
How is that for perfect light, right? Not only hardly a cloud in the sky, but it is still quite early, as shown by this picture, right in front of Buckingham Palace:
It was July 2011, so that early morning light came well before the workday started, giving the dedicated photographer who was willing to get up a window of opportunity, and I made what I could of it:
As you can see, I avoided none of the schmaltzy clichés of postcard photography. I thought, the light is so good, and so rare in London, I just can’t pass up on this. More personal pictures would have to wait. Come on, help yourself to some more touristy schmaltz:
Ok, you get the idea. Boring. Yes, lots of detail, and colours, and contrast. But boring, boring, utterly boring. Apologies.
Fast forward to….London, a bit more than a year later, the day after the Games, actually. Another day when work only started at 9 am, and I was out and about well before that. Except that I now have this gem of a stealth camera, the Sony NEX 7, which I can take right into a business meeting with 4 prime lenses, and no-one any the wiser. Mounted on it the extraordinary Leica Elmar 24mm f:3.8, which, surprise, surprise, gives almost the same focal length on my APS-C-equipped camera as the 35mm Zeiss on my full-frame Canon. So, back to Waterloo Bridge, the London Eye, Westminster in the background…
Except that the weather wasn’t quite as nice, was it? A light cloud cover was coming over the City, expected to get worse through the day. And it did, since this is what it looked like after the meeting:
That wouldn’t deter a true photographer from walking the few hundred yards from Waterloo Bridge to Westminster, despite what had become light rain…
And looking the other way:
Now that picture is very close to one taken in “perfect light”. Just as schmaltzy, too…:-(
But which one is more “interesting”? The one taken in “perfect” early morning light, or the one with the ominous clouds? The ones that looked like this:
So, my point is not: don’t get up early, don’t look for perfect light, just snap up postcards with your P&S, the monument will speak for itself and its beauty will overwhelm your total lack of any compositional care.
Rather it is: a perfect picture is not necessarily the picture of perfection. Perfect light is not necessarily the light of the perfect moment of a perfect day. Imperfections, defects, clouds can be very inspiring and give a picture tremendous strength and mood.
All you need to capture the moment is a camera, and openness of mind….
Session expired
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.
Hi Philippe, there’s no doubt in my mind the cloudy pictures have far more potential than the sunlit ones. In fact, Photoshop has a tool to add clouds to your images, but to my best knowledge, no one removes clouds to leave flat blue clouds instead. In the days of Velvia, there were a few (cliché) opportunities of crary colours with ND filters and a polariser at sensut, but in the conditions you describe, the second set of pictures clearly wins ! Your middle picture of the Thames with the Eye on the left and Houses of P on the right is actually a lovely compromise, with an interesting sky and reassuring light. It needs less work than the cloudy pictures. But It won’t make the walls of a gallery whereas the stormy ones have the potential to !
Thanks for the interesting idea 🙂