Street Photography Challenge – Own The Light

As you probably already know, light is one of the most important aspects of photography.  Without light, you’d have no photography.  In addition to being the most important ingredient in photography soup, light can also be used as a composition builder.

l1003169Light can be used to isolate your subjects or create interesting shadows as well as influence the mood of a photograph.  When you move beyond simply “exposing” a scene and adjust your exposure to take advantage of the light you are able to create images that will grab people’s attention.

l1003171For this challenge I’d like you to take advantage of your manual settings and adjust your exposure to emphasize light and shadow.  You’ll need to find areas where there is a natural contrast between light and dark, usually areas where the sun shines in between two buildings.  The best time to practice this is early to mid morning and mid to late afternoon when the sun light shines down at an angle.

All images taken with the Leica M (Typ 262) and the Leica 35mm f/2.0 lens unless otherwise noted.

8479199299-r1-016-6aTaken with the Leica M7 and Kodak Portra 400

For the images above I exposed for the brightest parts of the photograph to purposely sacrifice the shadow areas.  Shooting with a full frame camera makes it difficult to actually lose the shadow areas so I boosted the blacks in post production as well.

8479199299-r1-054-25aTaken with the Leica M7 and Kodak Portra 400

Upload your images to Instagram and tag them with #PhotolisticLife for a chance to be featured here on the website.  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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