Sheffield 19th August 2009 – The importance of sunlight

While the trip to Sheffield was for a purpose other than sightseeing. I did manage to make a little time for my favourite activity. Since this trip was date specific rather than weather I have the opportunity to talk about difficulties related to poor weather and poor lighting.

First of all Sheffield is a very pretty city with an excellent travel system. Trams, Trains and more buses than you could shake a stick at. A few of those buses were free and the trams were in my opinion well priced, £3 for an adult day ticket anywhere on the tram network. Plus for an industrial city it has obviously had a lot of money spent on it to make an attractive and unified city centre and a green city. The council obviously had an obsession with fountains, there are at least half a dozen in the Peace Gardens alone plus goodness knows how many more dotted around the city.

This proves to be useful when finding good postcard sights, fountains are an excellent draw to people especially in the summer. In fact after locating the Tourist Information Centre (a criminally small and poorly marked shop for the size of the city and the tourism potential in both the city and surrounding areas) and purchasing a selection of postcards I found that I had already taken one of the depicted shots of the Peace Garden fountain.

Unfortunately the sun refused to come out until I was just about to leave. I did get a few nice shots when the sun made an appearance but they obviously looked rushed and left no time for the random and unexpectedly brilliant shots that always come. While the shots I got while it was dull helped prepare me to get the same shots in the sunlight it was never the same and lost a lot of its spontaneity. As a result I have a few images that would make excellent postcards if not for the fact that the light quality is flat and dull. The sunlight is vital to the image, bright light and shadow and the intensity of colour are needed for interesting and vibrant location shots. Images that would encourage others to visit.


While I can fake the light quality with paint it is extremely hard and I would prefer not to do that. Especially as it makes matching the right new sky to the work very hard. Light makes an enormous difference and a sky that suited the dull colours may not at all suit bright ones. In addition some colours, especially buildings, change in unexpected ways and the way the shadows are cast can be almost impossible to add to an image. All you have is a 2 dimensional representation of a complex 3 dimensional scene, you can guarantee at least some of the shadows will look out of place. While I like out of place I do need a certain amount of reality to be retained in my images.