Digital Photography and Light
Ely Cathedral
Although I know the word photography means ‘writing with light’ I was particularly slow to appreciate the way that light can affect a photograph – well, affect the whole scene, in truth. Given my scientific credentials, I’m embarrassed to admit that I never noticed or understood that evening light can be golden whilst midday light is often stark until I photographed Ely Cathedral in June 2007. At 8.30pm the cathedral stonework looked a honey colour – perfectly matching the atmosphere of an evening stroll under a blue sky – but the glamour was gone next morning when the stonework looked more like concrete.
I was still using the camera like a tourist in those days, so my next encounter with the apparent vagaries of sunlight was on holiday in Bamburgh. The coastline there runs east/west so it’s the perfect venue for walking on the beach at dawn to watch sunrise (if you like getting up early) or at dusk to watch sunset (if you don’t). And again, it was the photographs which showed me that the beach looked tinted, mellow and dusky in the evening light, but white, harsh and bright in daylight.
After that I became increasingly aware of sunlight – more than just its colour. The shadows it casts; the way the setting sun picks out the tops of trees and rooftops in a sparkle of light; the way the morning sun shows dips and ridges in a field; the way sunlight can enhance a walk through the woods with contrasting shadows and highlights; the early morning sunlight on the canals in Amsterdam; in Seaburn, the White Lighthouse’s beam diminishing as the sun rose over the North Sea.
Galilee Chapel, Durham Cathedral
Then I started noticing the way sunlight plays in churches and cathedrals and how it seems to tell the story – the same story – in every building (because they all have the same east/west orientation). And I began to anticipate that story with child-like delight, each time we entered though the heavy west-end door, or the south porch. In the summer, when the sun is high, you see bursts of light on the floor around your feet – sometimes coloured like sweet wrappers if the light has passed through a stained-glass window. But in winter, when the sun is low, those same bursts of light are high up on the wall of the north aisle.
Browsing through thousands of photos I've taken shows so many special moments – and each one I see brings back that special memory; sun ‘spotlights’ on the effigies in Harewood Church; shadows in the cloisters at Durham, Norwich and at Lincoln; incense caught in rays of sunlight in St Helen’s York and in Ripon; those ‘sweet wrapper’ coloured lights in Selby and Leeds Minster; St Cuthbert’s window comes alive in Durham; highlights on the wall at York Minster and Selby; highlights on the floor at Harewood, Selby, King’s Lynn and more. And then there’s the light through doorways; and candlelight in crypts; natural light in Ripley and Paston; highlights, like angels’ wings, on the stone-flagged floor of Goodramgate, York. And most special of all, was the opportunity we had to be in Durham Cathedral at sunset and see the light on the columns in the Galilee Chapel changing towards dusk. Sunlight does something special in every church we visit – just as the masons and glaziers intended.
And that’s what photography has done for me, made me more aware and hence more appreciative of the times when the light is special – then given me a visual record of all those special moments.