Golden Hour Landscape. Wikipedia describes the Golden Hour as: “the first and last hour of sunlight during the day when a specific photographic effect is achieved due to the quality of the light.” That was the challenge for this week, posted by Carrie Swails at Photography Awesomesauce. I found it to be both refreshing and frustrating. It was nice to not worry about posing clients in that “perfect” position AND with everybody smiling. But, I’m also not used to photographing at this late hour. So getting the settings on my camera correct was tricky. Read: LOTS of pictures…the kids were begging me to take them home! Haha! I had already been out shooting for a while before the bewitching hour arrived. Actually, I took the opportunity this week to do two shoots. I caught these images during the first shoot:
But I fell in love with these images taken two days later:
But because it is full of the vibrance and fire of fall, I fell in love with this image and chose to submit this beauty:
I hope you enjoyed all the pictures today! This weeks challenge reminded me of what I love doing. Photographing people is fun and, I think, important. Important for the people being photographed, important for their future generations (my family loves pouring over all of the old photo albums my grandparents and great-grandparents have/had, and just seeing how much photography has changed over the generations and comparing members to one another is so much fun). But also important to society, generally. Photography shows people what life was once like, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful. The old cliche, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” rings true for me. You can tell me that there were hundreds of people lined up for a new showing and that’s great. But if you show me a picture of the scene…..well, now you have my attention! So, the photographing of people is important and can absolutely be fun, but I was thoroughly immersed in my work this week. Even the editing…which I loath. I think the main differences were:
- This work was for ME. No one else mattered. All that concerned me was that the image qualified for submission into the Challenge and that I liked it, and
- I didn’t have to worry about looking professional in front of a client. I always worry about this and it make me freeze. I feel less than comfortable telling others what to do, where to look, how to ‘BE.’ And let me just be honest here, while I like being around others, this does not necessarily mean that I want to socialize with them…I’m just not naturally a people person and this is something I’ve recognized about myself for years and have to force myself to do. It is usually worth it for me to push myself out of my comfort zone, here, but is still definitely something I must actively make myself do.
Hmph, just before listing these two items, I was considering giving up photographing people. But as I wrote the second item I realized that would be retreating to my comfort zone! So, I guess on a more personal level photographing people is important, for me, to keep me challenging myself to be more sociable. Oh, the irony.
This post means I’ve made it through the second week of the Winter Lighting Challenge 2013-2014! I’d love to hear what you think of the images I’ve shared; go ahead, it’s alright to stroke my ego ;).
I’ll see you next week,
~Katie