Week 2- At the Beach

So this week I went to the beach after class and it was a beautiful day. The sun was high in sky and there was a wisps of clouds visible. There was so much to look at the beach but I was contemplating the idea of source when I was staring off into the horizon. Then I started to look at the rocks along the shore and took a critical look at how they were being lit. The fact that it was noon, meant that the source was the down light of the sun, but then there was a secondary source of all the light reflecting off of the ocean. My camera couldn't pick up on all the details, but when I was there you could see the light playing off the rock on the left and right sides, but the side that was directly facing me had no light on it's surface since the rock was making a shadow that prevented the light from reflecting back on to it. This tied back into what we talked about in class, the fact that one source is brighter, but we have so much more extra light that fills the rest of the picture in so we have a composition of light, but we always have to remember where the main source of light is coming from.














Then on my way to the car I started to wonder about instances where there isn't so much reflection from the ocean, and then I started staring at the palm tree by my car. Now the interesting thing was that all the fronds on the tree were light from below and above (the sun and the reflection of the light of the top of the fronds on the frond above them). The thought had crossed my mind that the light was just shining right through the fronds, but the most interesting thing was that the bottom fronds had a huge shadow under them, because there was nothing under them to reflect the light up under them, so I knew that there was no way the light shining through the fronds. Then I looked at the lower part of the tree, and noticed that the little shadows that the bark created made it look 3-dimensional and part of the trunk that was smoother seemed to not look as interesting to the eye. During this trip to the beach I was able to see instances of reflections and shadow at one of my favorite spots.