No, not a metaphor for my ongoing cancer treatment! Walking under the King’s Bridge this afternoom, brilliantly sunny day, the shadows of the old, arched bridge contrasting with the brightly lit buildings visible beyond the arch. It was begging for a monochrome shot.
Autumn has been creeping in the last couple of weeks – truth be told, it wasn’t much of a summer here, even by Scottish standards! And we’re still getting more rainy days than nice, just as with the washed-out summer, but when that golden, autumn light does come out, the colours are rather lovely.
Autumn sunlight backlighting leaves still turning from green to brown and gold.
Fallen autumn leaf, stuck to a wet car window; always keep an eye open, you never know when an interesting photographic subject will offer itself up, if you notice it!
Of course, it isn’t just the trees and leaves, the autumn sun is so much lower in the sky that it now casts as much in the way of shadows as it does light, which creates scope for some interesting takes on an otherwise mundane subject, such as a chap sitting on a bench by the canal:
Vibrantly coloured flowers, pushing through a garden fence, spotted on the walk home from work, part of the petals catching the golden, evening sunlight, the rest in shade, some raindrops from earlier in the day still visible. Quick snap with the phone camera.
The giants cast vast shadows…
Some huge cranes were catching the evening light recently, which drew my roving eye to take a few snaps, zooming in closer until it looked like giant Meccano sets in the sky. The declining evening sunlight also made them cast enormous shadows onto some of the modern buildings at the end of the Union Canal too, which was just begging for some monochrome shots.
Walking through historic Greyfriars kirkyard recently, the winter sun now very, very low in the sky. Clear but freezing day, low angle of sun creating a lovely, soft, golden light quality and casting long, long shadows, such as here where it stretched long shadows from the old tombstones out across the kirkyard.
Normally it’s not good practise to point the camera lens towards the sun, but I needed an angle looking in that direction to get these shadow strips into frame as I wanted, so I simply moved around a little until from my perspective the sun was blocked by a tree trunk just enough that I could get the shot without flaring out the image. Some days you get lucky…