Natural and artificial light
For other examples:
Luca Campigotto p. 38
Denis Darzacq p. 53
Maciej Dakowicz p. 116
Another way to categorize light is by natural or artificial.
Natural light comes, in one form or another, from the sun. Artificial light comes from manmade sources – anything from household bulbs to street lights to flash.
Natural and artificial light are unequivocally distinct. They convey different moods and are very different in colour.
Here Nadav Kander photographs an anonymous house overshadowed by a monolithic overpass. See how the sodium glow of the street lights has drowned out the natural light and cast a yellowish hue over the image. This creates a sense of unease. It makes the scene feel so unnatural, almost polluted.
For a very different kind of light look back to the photograph by Tom Hunter at the start of this chapter. It shows a woman reading a possession order in the light of a window. The natural light gently touches the woman, the letter and her baby. Its colour is so ‘white’, it creates a state of innocent calm.
House under Highway, Los Angeles
Nadav Kander
2005