Friday, December 07, 2007

Different Light

Mrs. du Toit posts about how things look different in Germany (and thank you David for pointing it out). I've been to a few places around the world, so I can understand exactly what she's saying.

We all know that the earth is tilted on it's axis, and that light hits different parts of the world at different lengths or something of that nature. But you never quite understand just what that means until you see it with your own eyes. Every picture I took in Egypt was yellowish-brown in overtones, and not just because of the sand or dust. The light there was yellow. It gave everything a yellow tint, no matter what time of day or what the background.

Down here in Puerto Rico, the light is intense. It takes any color and just makes it... more, I guess. The greens are vivid. Where the water is blue it's a sapphire blue that almost hurts your eyes. And flowers damn near jump out, grab your eyeballs and scream "LOOK AT ME! I'M RED! I'M REALLY, REALLY RED, DAMMIT!" Because of the intensity of the light, that makes the shadows even more dramatic. Here's a picture I hope will sort of explain what I mean. Here's a photo I took at San Juan Bay - notice the color of the water, and the way the sky looks behind it. I did not alter this photo in any way. Click on it for the larger version.


It looks like a photo that someone used Photoshop to alter, but that's the way things just look down here.

The photos I took in Washington and Idaho have a different kind of light, more like you would find in Europe, since they're close to the same latitude. It's softer, and well, things just look differently.

Anyways, my battery is about to run out, but I just wanted to add my two cents.

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