there is something about the late afternoon fall light. something special. and it can make photos even more beautiful and romantically.
the light was JUST RIGHT at pebble hill plantation this weekend. for samantha and george’s engagement photo shoot. they both work with the youth at our church and they are so super awesome. george was not thrilled about this photo shoot. but by the end, he was a natural!
the more i take photos the more i have come to understand that it is not about the couple. not about the place (though pebble hill is AMAZING) but it is all about the light. in photography (literally “writing with light”) there are a few ways that i try to use the light. while i was editing these photos and thinking about all the ways to use light i started thinking about applying these ways of using light to my life...perhaps i am a photographer because God uses it to teach me so many things... about light and about life.
ephesians 5:13-14
But everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
"Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."
john 12:46
I have come into the world as a light,
so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.
1. adjust my aperture. (i open mine up to 1.4 on my lens). the more light the better for me. i need as much of the light as i can get. in photos and in my life. i need to keep my spiritual aperture as wide open as possible as well by staying in the Word constantly. not just reading books, blogs, thoughts ABOUT the Bible but the actual Words that give life and light my path.
2. change my angle. look in unique places for light. keep moving. keep looking at how the light affects each photo. so true in any situation. most of the time i only need to look at a situation in a different way to see it in a “different light”. the other day i was thinking about how much i wish we could get a car for millie BUT then i realized that if i looked at it from a different way that it was a blessing that she doesn’t have a car. it gives me the opportunity to pick her up every day and have time talking with her when she is “fresh” from school. so i can really know how her day went. change my direction. change my focus. change my angle from “taking things for granted” to “taking them with gratitude”. change your focus to see the way the light is actually hitting a subject in another way and lighting up something in a totally different way than originally thought.
3. find the reflections. allow reflected light to teach you something. it sometimes will surprise you with a new dimension that has not been discovered before. sometimes a photo looks entirely different to your eye than the way the camera reads the light and uses it to “write”. in my life, i need those “reflections”. the small glimpses of Light reflected off of something else. sometimes those are Godly people who reflect Him well. many friends who show me that He works through the darkest days and shows His Light all the brighter in the darkness...
one of my favorite descriptions of the light comes from one of my top three favorite books... the tale of despereaux by kate dicamillo.
which starts with this beautiful quote...
“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.”
one of the characters is a rat. a rat who loved the light...
well, you can read along from the actual book about this rat and his strange love of the light...
As our story continues, reader, we must go backward in time to the birth of a rat, a rat named Chiaroscuro and called Roscuro, a rat born into he filth and darkness of the dungeon...
Reader, do you know the definition of the word 'chiaroscuro'?
If you look in your dictionary, you will find that it means the arrangement of light and dark, light and darkness together. Rats do not like light. Roscuro's parents were having a bit off fun when they named their son. Rats, in fact, think that life is very funny. And they are right, reader. They are right.
In the case of Chiaroscuro, however, the joke had a hint of prophecy to it, for it happened that when Roscuro was a very young rat, he came upon a great length of rope on the dungeon floor.
"Ah, what have we here?" said Roscuro.
Being a rat, he immediately began to nibble at the rope.
"Stop that," boomed a voice, and a great hand came out of the darkness and picked the rat up by his tail and held him suspended upside down.
"Were you nibbling on Gregory's rope, rat?"
"Who wants to know?" said Roscuro, for even upside down, he was still a rat.
"You smart-alecky rat, you smart-alecky rat nib-nib-nibbling on Gregory's rope. Gregory will teach you to mess with his rope."
And keeping Roscuro upside down, Gregory lit a match with the nail of his thumb, sssssstttttt, and then held the brilliant flame right in Roscuro's face.
"Ahhhh," said Roscuro. He pulled his head back, away from the light. But, alas, he did not close his eyes and the flame exploded around him and danced inside him.
"Has no one told you the rules?" said Gregory.
"What rules?"
"Gregory's rope, rat, is off-limits."
"So?"
"Apologize for chewing on Gregory's rope."
"I will not," said Roscuro.
"Apologize."
"No."
"Filthy rat," said Gregory. "You black-souled thing. Gregory has had it with you rats." He held the match closer to Roscuro's face, and a terrible smell of burnt whiskers rose up around the jailer and the rat. And then the match went out and Gregory released Roscuro's tail. He flung him back into the darkness....
Roscuro sat on the dungeon floor. The whiskers on the left side of his face were gone. His heart was beating hard, and though the dim light from the match had disappeared, it danced, still, before the rat's eyes, even when he closed them.
"Light," he said aloud. And then he whispered the word again. "Light."
From that moment onward, Roscuro showed an abnormal, inordinate interest in illumination of all sorts. He was always, in the darkness of the dungeon, on the lookout for light, the smallest glimmer, the tiniest shimmer. His rat soul longed inexplicably for it; he began to think that light was the only thing that gave life meaning and he despaired that there was so little of it to be had...
He wanted to be filled, flooded, blinded again with light.
And for that, reader, the rat knew he must go upstairs...
Imagine, if you will, having spent the whole of your life in a dungeon. Imagine that late one spring day, you step out of the dark and into a world of bright windows, polished floors, winking copper pots, shining suits of armor, and tapestries sewn in gold...
"I," said Roscuro, spinning dizzily from one bright thing to the next, "I will never leave. No, never. I will never go back to the dungeon. Why would I? I will never torture another prisoner. It is here that I belong."
*Kate DiCamillo
one more photo. and i think that it was george’s favorite photo. and it had nothing to do with the light...
