Lost in the Foothills: Lighting 101

As the sun retreats behind the clouds and rain begins to plummet from the sky, the ambient light quickly begins to give way to man-made lighting. I'm inspired to write about something I just learned in a "for dummies" book I am reading. Here goes:

Light is everything in photography and each light source is a certain temperature, and therefore gives off a different color of light. The cooler the light, the more red it is and the hotter the light, the bluer it is. We don't necessarily see this because our brain adjusts it automatically to make everything balanced. The camera however, does not...which is super cool and super crazy frustrating at the same time if you don't understand it. "Why are my family photos all coming out orange-tinted? Arrrgggg!!!" (my first experience with this phenomenon Christmas 2008)

So now that I'm starting to slowly understand this...I took some photos around 6pm, on a rainy day in downtown Schenectady. Here's how it came out...

As you can see, the lights are green and the part of the sidewalk that reflected it is green too! Cool...
There's something in that book about what produces the light, tungsten or halogen or something, I forget but it makes a difference... Now that I recognize this, I can start visualizing how a picture might turn out, and how to embrace or correct it so as to avoid post-production depression. That's all for today, here's a few more examples...and a sneak peak for the next post :)

A slightly different angle...