Light Changes Quickly

I was recently reminded how quickly light can change. Last week I was out shooting and saw a magnificent rainbow over the ocean……I was right by my car and ran for the trunk to get my camera out, but by the time I had unzipped my bag and had my camera in hand……well, the rainbow was gone. I couldn’t believe it. Now that image is etched in my memory, if not in digital format.

The episode reminded me about a time last month that I was out shooting and the light also changed very quickly. But that time I was in a position to capture it. A few weeks back I posted an image of pylons on the Coos River that I had taken in the ‘blue hour’ just before sunrise. The contrast was low, the water reflected the bluish sky, and for many minutes the scene looked pretty much the same. But when the sun started to peek over the horizon the light started changing…..and changing fast.

I’m not going to say that it changed quite as fast as that disappearing rainbow which was gone a few seconds after I saw it (I don’t know how long it might have been there before I noticed it), but the feeling in the scene was visibly changing rapidly, driven by the rapid change in color temperature and brightness of the illumination.

As the sun was rising I did manage to capture the scene below, which, to me, signified the start of a new day .

Tugboat On The Coos River © Howard Grill

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