I was in DC this past week watching this little guy.
As a result, I wasn’t out much past dark with thoughts of street lights on my mind.
Instead, these are the shadows that street lights cast through the window shades of my Airbnb. Lovely designs that undulated with the passing of car lights.
For this challenge, that’s going to have to be enough.
A week’s worth of snuggles, smiles and slobbery, open-mouth kisses was worth not spending much time on this week’s blog post!
Light creates shadow as it passes through a solid object and effortlessly transforms an ordinary place.
I’ve recently started listening to classical music when I walk my Lab. The two of us log a lot of miles in the course of a week, traversing over and over, the same two or three routes on the military base we live on. The repetition can cause a person to stop “seeing” but a burst of sunlit days after a very gray December and the addition of the notes as they tumble about in my head, have made my wanderings seem new. I’m seeing with different eyes and observing with an adjusted attitude. There’s less noise in my head, certainly fewer words.
Come, walk with me into this world of shadow, light and music…..and feel the change.
Porcelain performed by Helen Jane Long.
Taking pictures is a huge part of my life so it makes sense that I’m obsessed with light. At any given time I’m aware of the light around me and how it transforms the space it touches. I photograph a lot of shadows but how many times do I photograph the light itself? Not very often….I’m more interested in capturing the way in which it changes a space. The way it illuminates.
The word illumination somehow carries a lot more weight than the word light. It implies an upgrade. It takes on added responsibility. When something is illuminated it is revealed. A dark corner or a plain wall becomes a canvas. The space underneath a table on the sidewalk becomes more than just concrete. Light has passed through something and altered the scene.
As I walk through my life I consciously try capture those fleeting moments of illumination.
When I looked up illumination in the dictionary this morning this was my favorite line:
“the luminous flux per unit area on an intercepting surface at any given point”
What I like about this definition is how scientific it is. What I like about the following images of illumination that I’ve captured with my camera is that they are anything but scientific. They are all about the beautiful ways in which my world is illuminated at any given moment.
Not surprisingly, I’m a big fan of what photographers refer to as the “magic hour.” That time of day when the light is, well, luminous. Shadows are long, the day is on pause before night falls, we are in-between.
Light can illuminate and the sum becomes so much more than all the parts on their own.
May all of our lives be just a bit more illuminated today than they were yesterday.
pauses&clicks 