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01 June 2011: Light (and dark). I posted this photograph on my deviantArt page a few years ago - I often use deviantArt as a testing ground for new images and there's a little overlap with this website. One woman who left a comment had the initial response that I shouldn't light a subject from behind. So she had been told. A pleasant conversation followed, and I think she went away with a better understanding of breaking the rules.

I take no credit for having placed the sun in that part of the sky to light the thousands of tons of concrete in the CN Tower from behind, but I did have an idea of what I wanted to achieve in post-processing when I saw the tower from that angle.

Back lighting (and/or chiaroscuro, to throw around technical artistic terms), illustrates one of the problems with light and dark in the world of digital photography. As an artist with a vision of an image you have no idea under what lighting conditions future viewers of that image will see it. Will they have a window reflecting off their screen? Will there be fingerprints over the fine details? Will their monitor be calibrated correctly for light/dark, contrast/brightness (um, no...)? [My monitor is calibrated, and this photograph does have some detail visible in the tower itself, as well as some contrast in the clouds.]

So, what's an artist to do? Nothing. Make your art and let the world see it as it sees it. Once your digital art is out in the wild you have no control over how people see or interpret it. After much thought I'm comfortable with that. I even welcome it.

- Paul

p.s. I'd be interested in what detail you can see in this photo. Send me a note using the form on the contact page and let me know.

[Image: CN Tower]

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