Winter Wait
Maybe one of my true crimes as a photographer is that I’m not a morning person, therefore I have to depend on last light or intermittent storm lighting to produce drama in my images. This is one of those cases, as I had passed the scene ‘going in’ and the light was mediocre. But the sun had dropped on my ‘way out’ and I was able to make it work. One small detail which really intrigues me is the angle of the shadows from the fence posts relative to the angle of the shadow from the middle tree. Same giant, burning light source in the sky, yet there’s a 45° difference in how their shadows fall - I just can’t figure it out. Feel free to leave a comment if you have some insight…
Happy to offer an explanation! The difference in the apparent angle that you see in the shot is due to the angle of the ground. The fence posts are obviously on a slant, with the ground rising away from the camera. This effects the apparent angle of the shadows as seen from the camera.
If you were to move upwards above the ground, you would see the shadows become more in line as you ascended, until at a great height, they would appear parallel, as one would expect.
Further confusing the matter is the tree in the midground. The angle of its shadow makes it appear as if the sun is directly to the camera right, though it’s apparent from the other trees that it’s not. I’d wager that the middle tree is leaning away from the camera at more than 45 degrees.
This point is asctually misunderstood by the lunar landing hoax conspriacy theorists. They see similar illusions in Moon photos, and claim that it is proof of more than one set of lights in a studio.
I had to chuckle when I read that you’re not a morning person. (very brave of you
I just started doing a bit of photography and have also found I’m not a morning person either. A fellow photographer keeps trying to coax me out to shoot at the crack of dawn, but since October ‘07 I’ve been making excuses. I have to admit, one morning last fall I went out to shoot on my own, and was absolutely amazed by the light and the way everything was covered in a blanket of frost. I’m hoping that warmer weather will make it easier to venture out at such an early hour.
Regarding your riddle- my husband and I think it’s actually a shadow created by a depression in the snow, where it has drifted away. Similar to the one the bush in the background has formed. If you look closely, the bush in the foreground has a small one just beginning to form to the left of the base. As do each of the fence posts. Then, the actual shadow of each of the objects is pointing at 7 or 8 o’clock to the viewer eye.
Thanks for the great replies, those are both plausible answers to the shadow question. You can see the tree in the middle has a faint shadow that matches the angle of all the other elements, so I’m not sure what the dark streak is…it might just be as Diane suggested, a variance in the snow. Although, Neil, your explanation makes perfect sense and you’re right about the angles of both the land and the middle tree. Very interesting, this little image. Again, thank you both for your input.
Cody