Charles T. Low Photography

As my international fan-base knows (thank you all!), I have leaned more and more towards darkness photography (with no explicit metaphorical message), including dawn photography.

As an early-riser, this inevitably leads to sunrise (which around the spring solstice occurs around 5:15 a.m.!). Often, I am already on the way back to the coffee machine studio long before then, but sometimes I plan to stay, and sometimes a sunrise will suddenly surprise me, if I had been lost in the moment (it's an art-thing!).

This blog's subtitle, Just Give Me a Moment, arises because I lose interest in the light, usually within a few minutes of sunrise. Serious photographers all know about the Golden Hour, and I in no way intend to demean it — I do photograph in it! — in saying that, compared with the caressing lushness of the dawn light which I had just experienced, almost any direct sunlight at all feels too harsh, too stark.

Nonetheless, I do find 219 sunrise-photographs in my personal portfolio, so let's see a little of what's in there (and why).

Some of them I have not ever posted, until now.

Above, an extreme telephoto. When the Sun is small in an image, I generally let it "burn out", meaning that it is so bright compared with everything else that the Sun itself just all goes white. But when the Sun is large in an image, I will often expose it more accurately for itself, which requires either:

1. fancy footwork with the camera settings (and sometimes filters), or
2. cloud or fog partly obscuring it, which sometimes allows a more usable exposure for the entire scene.

In the image in question, there was next-to-nothing obscuring the Sun, and so I let the rest of the image go very dark.

The human eye (the "eye-brain complex") cannot see it that way — it's one of the many gifts which cameras bestow upon us.

The image below is of a partial solar eclipse, which happened to coincide that day (2021-06-10) with sunrise. Blockhouse Island was packed with onlookers, most of us armed with cameras. (I would like to see some of their photographs as well.)

Above, sometimes something funky happens. I had just finished a dawn session, then had made a few photographs of the sunrise, in its brevity (and endured without comment a nearby conversation from some quite friendly but very self-confident science-deniers), and was about to pack up and head back to my lodgings when I wondered what would happen if I waited the five minutes for the Sun to line up with the ship.

That is what happened.

I'm glad I waited.

As we have already seen, the Sun doesn't always have to be directly visible in the photograph; I include, in my sunrise collection, images made during sunrise, regardless of whether the Sun itself resides within the frame.

In the image below, the risen Sun is behind the freighter. (I live on a Seaway, and freighters pass in front of my camera quite often. These images are simply bound to occur, and when they do, they require almost speed-of-light reflexes — the moments come and go in the blink of an eye.)

And equally if not more often, in my sunrise work, the Sun constitutes the actual subject of the image.

Everything else still and always matters. Context matters. Faithful readers will recognize my personal art-framework:

1. How:
   • Light
   • Composistion
   • Background
2. Why:
   • Beauty
   • Interest
   • Meaning

So the Sun, above, does not fill the frame, and nor did I want it to, although it certainly is the identified subject. I like it in context, and (to me) everything about the image contributes something important.

Whereas below, the included sunrise seems relegated, to me, at least a little, to a more supportive role and the subject may actually be the winter fog. I think that it still needs the sunrise!

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The Sun Always Rises

Dawn is such a peaceful time of day. The World is generally still asleep, the occasional passer-by may say hello, the darkness is constantly ebbing, with colours unmatched in any other setting and then ...

BAM!

... the Sun rises.

It is often that instantaneous; it's not there, and then it is there. There is nothing which a person can do but gaze at it for a moment, while there is still enough atmosphere between you and it for your retinas to allow it.

As with many other things in life, it doesn't last long, which makes it particularly special. Plus it often leads on to other wonderful things, although, in photographic terms, I will often leave those for some other photographer.

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You may wish to look through my larger portfolio. Almost everything is for sale. I favour large wall art, and also deal in books and other small items: prints, notecards, and postcards.

Thank you all so much for reading! Kindly comment.

Charles T. Low
Photographer
Blog #83
2022-07-01

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