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Photo 52: A Play on Light {46}

In this week's color study, my P52 circle focused on yellow and orange hues. While this would have been the perfect time for some golden hour images, small guy and I went in search of shelter from the scorching heat wave instead. In his first visit to a movie theater as a "big kid", we found some yellow lighting among the heavenly air conditioning. There was far less visible light in the theater than these images indicate - to get these shots, I had to push my camera settings and manually focus in the dark.  Fun to play, even if they aren't beautifully crisp. 

Next up, please check out the beautiful work of my friend, photographer and architect  Lisa Rigazio in Maryland. Her creativity this month has been inspiring and I can't wait to see what she and the rest of the circle come up with. Please take a spin!

Photo 52: A Play On Light {44}

We are in the home stretch of our P52 and this month's focus is on the color of light. This is a bit of a tricky topic, because the wavelengths that make up visible light cover the entire color spectrum - the colors we "see" are the end result of an object absorbing or reflecting certain wavelengths and not others, not the color of the light itself.  

Another facet of this concept is when we choose to set white balance using Kelvin. The Kelvin scale essentially measures the temperature of light - whether it is cooler (blues/greens) or warmer (reds/yellows) and tells our cameras how to interpret that light. So, for example, a cool Kelvin setting is useful when shooting indoors because the blues in the setting counteract the yellows in fluorescent lights.  

For our first week, we were on the hunt for blue. I found a blue twilight and a bright blue playground, then couldn't put my camera down once I started playing with sunlight reflected in turquoise waters. I had way too much fun standing in the pool with my camera, finding ways to capture ripples and reflections of sun and clouds in the water and the bubbles. So please forgive the excessive share but there are fun details to be found if you look closely. And when you are done, please travel onwards to my dear, dear friend Kami Chaudhery. In fact, the water shots were taken in her parents' pool while we swam to celebrate her birthday on the 4th of July. Please leave her some belated greetings as you check out her gorgeous work!