Do you only photograph in "good" light?

I've grown accustomed to shooting in bright, harsh sunlight, which is one reason I've come to appreciate lower contrast lenses and older film emulsions. Occasionally I luck out and get some nice evening light.
 
buzzardkid said:
Those low-sun shots are real nice, but most days The Netherlands have the biggest softbox on the planet, it's called 'a cloudy sky.' :D

Those low-contrast shots you get from that are much easier to get punchy when (digitally) developing than it would be the other way, getting rid of too high contrast!
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I too love low-contrast scenes. So easy to post-process to my liking.

I wish we have more cloudy days here in Texas, USA.
Harsh light and hot humid air is what we have to look forward to in Summer.

Good thing is, all the gunked lubricants in my old cameras melt when I took them out in the heat, and shutters and aperture starts working again :D
 
shadowfox said:
I too love low-contrast scenes. So easy to post-process to my liking.

I wish we have more cloudy days here in Texas, USA.
Harsh light and hot humid air is what we have to look forward to in Summer.

Good thing is, all the gunked lubricants in my old cameras melt when I took them out in the heat, and shutters and aperture starts working again :D
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That's so true ... we all feel younger I expect
 
helenhill said:
No silly....that would be Boring :eek:
I shoot in All types of Light :)
I mean Photography is ALL about The Light...Chasing, Catching

Do Love Low Light...keeps me on my toes
Can make the Photograph more Interesting & Atmospheric

I seem to LOVE all the bad things...vignetting, Flare, poor light :p...:bang:..:D
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i want to be just like you when i grow up...:angel:
 
It looks like most people will make do with whatever the weather dishes out. I once went to a talk by a photojournalist that almost never used flash. His motto was "if you can see it, you can shoot it".
I shoot in all light too but I do prefer a little bit of hard lighting, maybe because here in the Pacific Northwest we almost never get it. Some shots just won't look good in flat dull light no matter how much you push film, so you just have to choose different subjects on those days. On the other hand, a rainy day can be great for street shooting with TriX @1600.
 
I wait for "good light" for personal work, but for events and stuff, we got to shoot regardless of what the light is.
 
I had a feeling most RF users would photograph in any light. Glad to hear it. Now if it is your job and the right light is necessary, I can see that too.
 
I avoid harsh sunlight, as I don't know how to handle that and ever get good (by my standards) results.

I would just say that I take extremely few photos on bright days from 10AM through 4PM because the light is horrid for what I want to record.

The one glaring :rolleyes: exception was a family wedding I was forced to shoot at midday on a beach. I sat down with the groom weeks earlier and told him I didn't want the assignment and the pictures would suck enormously. Long story short, I shot it in harsh daylight using a flash to smooth out the lighting ratios. I f^%Ing hate using a flash ever but the social pressures were enormous at the time. (They loved the pictures, I would have to say they did not suck as bad as I expected them to, but that ain't sayin' much.)

sorry for the digression . . . back to the topic . . . when I am "making art" away from my basement studio, I shoot in very very selective ambient light.
 
I photograph whenever I can find the time. Admittedly a lot of my photos made in crappy light are pretty crap, but I'm having fun rather than trying to make a living from this so no worries. I do prefer available light and no flash in doors and at night, hence my preference at those times for a rangefinder with fast glass. I also try to avoid the harsh mid-day sun on those rare days when we have sun, but on most of those days I seem to be in the office anyway. If I'm on vacation and likely to be out with my camera mid-day then I like to experiment with ISO 25 and 50 films but my keeper rates on those are pretty low.

Cheers,
Rob
 
Because I photograph people I did not previously know, their schedule of being out and about determines when I photograph, not the light.

I much appreciate my kind of character revealing light which is hard, direct and with distinct shadows. But I take what is there when my subjects are.
 
jsrockit said:
Do you only photograph in "good" light?

By good, I mean your personal definition of whatever good light in your area of the world is.

I'm suprised when I hear about people waiting for the right time of day to go photographing (for personal photography, not work). I get it... and we all would love to have good light when we photograph. However, do you only photograph during these peak times?

I generally go photographing whenever... even during that mid-day blinding sun and / or in the rain.

How about you? Do you think about this or just go out and photograph whenever you get a chance.
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No matter what we say, being able to photograph under any lighting condition is dependent on the hi-ISO capability of the sensor/film employed before anything else.

You can set the X-P1 to ISO 6400 and cover all hours after sunset with hand holdable shutter speeds and get perfectly usable shots; color or b&w. To argue to do the same with film is facing a lot of compromises; first the elimination of two-thirds of the tonality.

The best contribution of the digital has been to encourage us to use our cameras under any lighting conditions. We can predict that two years from now ISO-25600 could well be what the ISO-6400 is for today. Then most of us would hardly be needing to pay for any aperture larger than f2.0, let alone f1.4.
 
there is no such thing as bad light, there are just bad photographs.

in fact as Helen says often what is considered by many as bad light is the best light.
 
d_ross said:
there is no such thing as bad light, there are just bad photographs.

in fact as Helen says often what is considered by many as bad light is the best light.
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I fully agree, at least it often is the light that gives the most interesting results. The whole one hour before sunset or one hour before dawn thing is mostly for landscape photographers, though even landscapes can look more interesting in "Bad light". Film Noir is nothing but a series of bad lighting setups :)

Dominik
 
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