Golden Hour Views: Kloe Loiselle
For this class assignment, we were assigned to take three to five photos of the sunrise or sunset throughout the week. The whole point of this assignment was to focus on lighting, and how certain light affects parts of photos. In everyone's mind, this project would be easy. But in reality, it was harder than we thought. In this post, I'll be talking about any challenges I may have had while taking these, and how I overcame them, the lighting aspect of the photos and any possible compositional elements I can see. Lighting is very important, especially if you want great photos. The weather wasn't the best this week, which means there wasn't great lighting, so majority of photos taken had grey clouds or gross snow (good old Canadian snow). I worked with what I had, and some photos turned out better than I thought; here they are.
My dog watching the sunrise
This was a sunrise photo I took while on my way to school. There was a lot of grey in the sky that morning which was sad because I know if there weren't as many grey clouds, the sky would have looked nicer and could have made this photograph even better. One thing I struggled with was my dog. I know he may be cute, but when the window was down, he tried getting more than half of his body out of it which made this harder to capture. I had to try holding him lower to one, not jump out the window, and two, so I could get a good picture. The aspects I enjoy from this photo is the sun itself, because I think it looks nice, regardless of the boring sky above it. The other thing I like is the reflection of the sun on the car. When I look at this photo, I can see a leading line towards the sun. The curvature of the road in the mirror and from the cars shows a line going towards the sun.
Capturing the sunset during class break
This was a sunset photo taken during a ten-minute break from my evening class. There was a lot of colour in the sky and a lot of distractions all around. One thing I struggled with was cars and people constantly passing by and getting frame. Of course, I’m not going to stop any of them for my photo, so I simply had to wait for a good time to capture this photo. What was unpleasant what the cold. We’re in the middle of winter during an evening class so of course it’s going to be cold. I just had to capture this photo quick to not get again. The aspects I enjoy from this photo are all the colours, because I think it looks nice and candy-like. The other thing I like is the view at the distance. The trees and building are nice from the distance compared to the snow and cars closer to me. When I look at this photo, I can see the repetition from the light posts. They all have the same shape and are all at an equal distance to look clean.
After work view
This was a sunset photo taken about an hour after I got home from work. There was a lot of color in the sky, and I thought it was beautiful. The only real struggle I had was when I first put this photo into Behance. It originally kept turning sideways even though the photo was vertical. I didn’t know how to fix it, but thankfully, it eventually fixed itself. This photo was captured from inside my kitchen because we’re in the middle of winter and I didn’t feel like walking onto the patio in my socks. The aspects I enjoy from this photo are all the colours (same as photo above), because I think it looks nice and candy-like. The other thing I like is the tree sticking out in the middle with the colours going through. When I look at this photo, the closest compositional element I can see is symmetry, from the two houses next to one another with the tree in the middle.
Lighting can either lead to better or worse photos. Lighting is usually one of the most important aspects of photos, but when it comes to sunrises and sunsets, you never what you're going to get. Take my first photo per example, it was darker than the other in a way that wouldn't affect most people taking a photo. But as a photographer, you notice the smaller things like the grey sky in that one first photo compared to the other two.
