igblog: OCA Course: Light Through the Day.

Light through the day: "The best laid plans - " etc. The Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before this exercise were bright and sunny all day, but I was working. The BBC weather forecast for the Thursday was for more of the same so an early start to the intended site, a nice shiny new grain silo at a local farm, was made, but I soon found the site was unsuitable because of intrusion of nearby trees. I therefore diverted to our local fish pond, a nice tranquil scene open to the sun. The sun was just up as I arrived, and, although misty, it looked like it was going to be fine as forecast. The scene is taken from over a high wide ivy-covered wall, looking due south across the pond, and because of the awkward position, I had to hand hold the camera - hence the high shutter speeds. The camera was the EOS 1D Mk111 with 17-40mm zoom lens at approx. 27mm, ISO 400, and the white balance was fixed on the "daylight" setting. All was going well until about 2pm, when it unexpectedly clouded over and spoiled the sequence, with no nice rosy sunset, so I didn't end up with a good, full series. The time, effort and petrol involved meant the exercise won't be repeated. I did take a second set of images at the same time from a different viewpoint looking due east, but as these flatly refuse to upload onto the Blog (a serious problem with this course), I can't show them today - I'll try and post them later. The images read from bottom up (another Blog loading problem).

As the sun moves round to the south and west, the house in the distance gradually comes out of shadow to reveal its walls in the diffuse western light. The weeping willow trees show initial shadow on the left side, moving to the right as the day progresses. The colour temperature starts cold and blue, and is just showing signs of warming up in the mid afternoon before going blue again because of the cloud. The nicest image is the first one at 06-30 hours, which confirms you have to get up early.

The main reason this exercise is posted late is the inordinate number of weeks it took to train the ducks to sit in the correct position.

Moral: Don't trust the BBC weather forecast.

9. 18-30: 1/30 @ F5.6