It’s all about the blue.
I don’t know if your kids or grandkids ask you question after question after question, but my kids use to all the time while I was shooting them. They were great models so I shot with them all the time. I remember shooting with them late one morning and during a quick break, one came up and ask me why I didn’t shoot when the sky was blue, followed quickly by the question why is the sky blue anyway?
I told them what I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops. I like shooting during the “Golden Hour“. I like the colors and the long shadows. I like it because it’s soft easy light compared to the harsh reality of the midday sun. I can get different parts of my composition closer in exposure when the sun is low on the horizon.
It’s not that I don’t like blue skies, but in order to get the exposures close, without having to shoot away from the sun, those skies can turn a whitish blue; especially close to the horizon where the shorter blue wavelength must pass through more atmosphere and as a result, gets scattered away before reaching your lens. If I’m caught in a position where I can’t shoot under the kind of light/sky I prefer, then I’m going to compose my photo where the entire frame is about the blue sky.
“Ok, so daddy”, one of my three impetuous daughters asked, “Why is the sky blue?”
“Well sweetie”, I said to her. “It’s like this. When the sun is way up in the sky it lets out light at a short angle. This shorter angle lets my favorite colors, red, orange, and yellow, pass through the air (atmosphere) without being messed with. The shorter colors like blue and violet get eaten up by the gasses (molecules) in the air (atmosphere), which scatters their light. This causes the sky to look blue whichever direction you look; the blue light reaches you everywhere overhead.” I gave her a minute to digest what I had said and then continued with the fact that water vapor (humidity) and pollution make for a cloudy day and that’s why the sky sometimes looks gray.
She gave me what I thought was an incredibly curious and intelligent face then said, “Can I have a quarter for some ice cream?”
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog.
JoeB
