Visual Qualities of Landscape

November 28th, 2006

Scenes that are dull at midday can become exciting at sunset, or equally, calm but very evocative in the early morning mist. The appearance of a landscape changes so much during the minutes when the sun is touching or just above the horizon, that is worth giving a special thought to photography at dusk or dawn.

In the early morning and late afternoon, the sun casts long shadows that scythe across the scene, picking out subtle textures and finest dips in the land. Towards the middle of the day, high sunlight cuts shadow lengths to a minimum, and the landscape looks much flatter.

Spring foliage is fresh, but by late summer it can look parched and colour faded. Mist, fog, and snow can make the landscape almost monochromatic. Rainbows appear whenever the sun shines through falling rain, but the colours aren’t always bright enough, unless the are dark clouds behind.

Latitude affects the colour of the sky. At higher latitudes the sky lo9oks a deeper shade of blue, and the colour depends in the water when the sun is low. Furthermore, a greater proportion of light from the sky is polarised at higher latitudes and in the winter months, so a polarising filter had more effect, turning the sky an even richer shade of blue.

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