Casting a Shadow

One of the things I aspire to do in my photography is to find compelling subjects in ordinary things; to see things other people walk by and never notice.  I have to admit, though, that I sometimes question whether I’m making any progress toward my goal.  But, then, I’ll take a picture that makes me believe that I may be improving more than I realize.

This image is one of those pictures.  It is not  the kind of shot I would have even seen when I started photography, much less photographed.  I first noticed this shadow one morning when I had gone for an early morning run in my neighborhood.  I was captivated by the strong definition of the shadow caused by the streetlight that was directly behind the tree casting the shadow.  I was determined to photograph it.  The only question was when.  Fortunately, neither the tree nor the street light was going anywhere any time soon, so I had plenty of flexibility to time my return.

The following Saturday, I got up very early, about 3:30 in the morning, and headed back to the tree shadow.  Granted, it was hard to get up that early, but I knew I would be the only one out.  I could get everything set up without having to worry about traffic on the street.

Capturing the image was pretty easy, although I had to make some minor adjustments, such as raising the ISO to 400, because of the lighting conditions.  I also had to use a slightly larger aperture, f/16, to keep the shutter speed from exceeding the camera’s 30-second maximum.  But, these were very small compromises to make in order to create the image, and none of them had any discernible effect on image quality, which I was initially concerned about.

I took several shots of the scene, but I quickly noticed the images all had bright orange tones rather than the soft white that I saw with my eyes.  The reason for this was the light was produced by a streetlight which generally has a much cooler color temperature than the daylight white balance I use, and it was something I had not anticipated.

I tried to make adjustments in Lightroom, but I just couldn’t get the image to look like I wanted it to look.  I finally realized that the subject of the image wasn’t the color but the shadow of the tree, and the color was actually a distraction.  Eliminating the distraction meant eliminating the color, so I converted the image to black and white, enhanced the contrast, and ended up with this final photograph.

Subscribe for News & Updates

By clicking “Subscribe”, you share your email address (and optionally, your name) with me for the sole purpose of receiving an email notification of new blog posts published on this site. Neither your name nor your email address will ever be sold.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.