There is no such thing as bad light...

[DominikDUK]

There is no bad light, there is only light that is not right for your vision.

 

[nongfuspring]

There is certainly bad light.

Photography is always about working within restrictions, which is why I'd like to get better at using artificial lighting.

 

[sevo]

Bad light is the thing still visible in the darkroom as you pull the film from the cartridge...

 

[uhoh7]

Bad light is the thing still visible in the darkroom as you pull the film from the cartridge...

nice one 🙂

Bad light, a la Manchester, usually means sun is hidden, the light is flat. As we all know that's only one sort, and there are many degrees of of flat light.

So bad light simply means the absence of golden hour type landscape luminosity.

Perhaps a lazy description but useful when expressing frustration 🙂

Where i live there is often quite interesting light in the winter, since the sun comes out alot and the angle is low even at noon. 🙂


L1027595-2 by unoh7, on Flickr

But really with these sort of frames, not the primary value:


Thinkin by unoh7, on Flickr

 

[BlackXList]

There is absolutely such a thing as bad light, both natural and man made.

I frequently shoot in that Manchester light and there are times when the drab edge can knock 10 - 20% off an image you were hoping to get.

Anybody who's tried shooting a live performance in a dark venue with the only stage lights being gelled red will attest to the fact that there is absolutely such a thing as bad light.

"Bad light" doesn't stop me shooting, it definitely affects what I can expect to get back from the shots though.

 

[KM-25]

...there is only light, which is used badly or well.

Agreed 100%

 

[Samouraï]

There's light that is difficult to use. There is light that is near impossible to use. Not every minute of the day in every spot in the world are there these beautiful slices and dollops of golden-hour that make you go "oh wow, what a find, what a great moment!" But sure, you can have enough ugly light to capture a great moment; in this case, I suppose any light is "well-used" if it allows you to expose a frame. It's a non-argument and there is nothing to discuss if this is what you mean.

Now if you have the time to manipulate light into doing what you want it to do, well that's great. I suppose given infinite time and budget and manpower...

What is this thread about again? Self-aggrandization and the myth of the samurai-street-photographer?
<-----Only in the movies.

 

[Daniel Teoli Jr.]

Yes, there is bad light.

I concur.

Yes, we can try to make the most of it. Certain light is better than other light. An no light is very tough to shoot in if your shooting available light.

 

[Hsg]

If you're photographing for the light, only then this question of good or bad light arises.

 

[Timmyjoe]

When I'm walking around with Tri-X and shooting for myself, I agree, there is no such thing as bad light. I like recording the light as it exists.

But when I'm working it's a different story. Walked into a high school gymnasium last Friday to cover a basketball game and the first thing that hit me was, "When are they going to turn on the lights?" When I asked an official I was told, "This is all the light we have." So to get any kind of shutter speed for freezing any of the action, even wide open, I needed to crank the ISO over 10,000, which isn't exactly pretty, and still only gave me 1/500th of a second. Blurry layups. So yeah, I would say that was "Bad Light"