'Good light'?

If you read enough photography magazines or watch enough photography YouTube videos on landscape photography you'll inevitably hear you should shoot in the hour after dawn and the hour before sunset. Some go further and dismiss shooting landscapes at any other time of day. Remember when you were told there are 'rules' in photography that you're supposed to follow and then someone tells you, 'actually, it's fine to break the rules', same applies to this idea about only shooting landscapes in the first and last hour of the daylight. If the sky is clear, sure, the first and last hour of direct sunlight will be the softest and warmest and we generally find that to be flattering and spiritually warming but what if you ignore the beautiful landscape spread out before you because it's two hours before sunset only for cloud to build on the western horizon and that beautiful warm light is gone before that precious one hour window you've been told is the only worthwhile time to shoot? Don't be bound by rules! Use your imagination. Engage your creativity. You can plan all you like to get to a location with all the kit you'd ever need only for the weather or life to scupper your plans. Roll with the punches and make the best of the situation. Is it disappointing to not be shooting what you had planned? Hell yeah, but it'd be more disappointing to not get anything because you threw all the kit back on the car and left when the plans got ripped up. Evolution shows us the success of a species is dependant on adaptation and we want that same success for our photography.

I left home with a largely blue sky, an hour later it looked like this (see above). We all know where this was going. Two hours later it was as expected (see below).

Virtually featureless pale grey/white sky. Was it still good for my architectural abstracts? Sure, it wasn't ideal, and certainly, little to no point in including much, if any, sky in the images, but that leaves the immense range of textures and patterns to be captured, some of which maybe be better in soft light than more contrasty direct lighting.When it started raining, I continued to shoot, though the rain on the lens did make for some otherwise unnecessary retouching work. Eventually though, I sought shelter inside and continued to shoot abstracts and textures.

The patina of the above panels might not have recorded so cleanly in bright conditions with reflections muddying the look of the surface.

The retouched images will be added to the Limited Edition gallery over the next few weeks as they're retouched, the texture shots will either be made available on the Open Edition gallery or as a texture pack download.
Rounded off the day with some creative inspiration taking in both the Tate Modern extension and the FIXPhoto Exhibition at the OXO Tower Bargehouse and even spoke briefly to it's curator, Laura Noble. A productive day, despite the highly changeable weather.
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