Light through the day

Exercise: Light throughout the day (12 Photographs)

The weather finally relented for one day at least and I have managed to get this exercise completed. 

This exercise required me to find a landscape location and take a series of photographs, starting at sunrise and finishing at sunset. At least one photograph was to be taken an hour. This was an exercise to show how the light changes throughout the course of a day. 

The sequence of photographs below were taken over the course of one day. Monday 4th November 2013. 

The white balance (WB) was set to sunny, this was in order to get the WB constant throughout the sequence. ISO was set to 200 and the aperture to f16 to ensure a good depth of field, I varied the shutter speed depending on the light available at the time. I used a tripod to ensure that the framing was exactly the same for each shot.

The sunrise for this day was 0711hrs and sunset 1644hrs. 

The location for this series of photographs was Bovey Tracey Cricket Club, as this would be an area I could get back to at the required times during the day, and it had the necessary buildings and landscape to show the changes in light to best effect. 

0800hrs - shutter speed 1/25 sec

As I knew the light would be changing fast just after sunrise and just before sunset, I opted to increase the the number of shots at each of these times of the day.

0815hrs - shutter speed 1/40 sec

0830 hrs - shutter speed 1/40 sec

0900hrs - shutter speed 1/50 sec

0930hrs - shutter speed 1/125 sec

1100hrs - shutter speed 1/125sec

1300hrs - shutter speed 1/100 sec

1500hrs - shutter speed 1/100 sec

1515hrs - shutter speed 1/60 sec

1545hrs - shutter speed 1/40 sec

1600hrs - shutter speed 1/25 sec

1620hrs - shutter speed 1/15 sec

1630hrs - shutter speed 1/10 sec 

1644hrs - shutter speed 1/2.5 sec

With the sun completely below the horizon and the WB set to 'sunny' this photograph has a distinct blue colour to it. This was due to the incorrect setting of the WB, but as stated earlier in the text the WB was set to sunny for consistency. 

Sunny WB setting for the Nikon D300 gives a value of 5000k, set to auto WB the camera gave a value of 7500k for this photograph. 


As the series of photographs show the light at either end of the day is far more pleasing and easier on the eye. This is what experienced photographers call the 'golden hour' and it is at these times most good landscape photographs are taken. 

The photographs taken around the middle of the day when the sun is high in the sky, or as high as it would get for a November day show little contrast. Compare these with the photograph taken at 1620 or 1630hrs, these photographs show attractive colours within the clouds.