Project 53: Fluorescent Light

Had I done this project 10 years ago in the cottage I lived in then, I could have taken these images in the kitchen itself which had a horrible strip light across the ceiling. It did that awful flickering & buzzing before switching on and blinding you as you came in from the dark lane. Thankfully such lights are hardly seen in houses now, and the effect of light on mood is commented on in "Light Science & Magic" where it refers to the effect on mood (& productivity?) of office workers when you compare fluorescent lights to tungsten spots to overhead skylights.

My feeling with this exercise is that it was again more relevant in the days of film, as white balance settings generally correct these casts. Shooting in RAW gives an extra margin of error as white balance can be corrected post shutter if required. The other problem I had with this project was the fact that it required taking photos in locations that can be a bit awkward (why is that woman over there taking a picture of the fruit & veg isle in our supermarket - that sort of thing!).

Regarding film, I listened to an interesting podcast from Chris Marquardt who has recently started enjoying film as opposed to digital. He said that he was enjoying the slow pace with film, and the different mindset that brought. With digital, the workflow means that you can correct so much after the event, so he normally takes several images and then picks the best later. With film there is no such luxury, therefore much more time is spent pre shutter making sure that he gets it right first time. This means composition, exposure, colour balance etc. must all be right first time. I still have a film SLR that my husband used, but I have never used it. I would like the challenge of taking some film images for the reasons that he states, but for some reason it scares me. Perhaps at the end of the course, I may try a roll and see what comes.

Anyway, I managed to find 3 locations which were not polluted by window light - my kitchen worktop at night, a consulting room at the vets and Tesco. The most "coloured" light seemed to be the one in the vets, which probably reflects the age of the light. The Tesco lights were very bright & uncoloured, and even the Daylight WB setting didn't create a strong cast. The auto WB setting did a pretty good job in all cases, although the fluorescent WB setting created the most colourless image in every case. I must admit I sometimes struggle to see colour casts, unless they are really obvious, so I tried to use white in the images so that the green colour could be seen most easily.

The key learning point from this project was to heighten awareness of the colours of artificial light, and to give consideration as to whether they add to the image or should be corrected. It also supports my current workflow of shooting in RAW which gives extra flexibility for toning down/ correcting casts when they occur.

I have included an example taken in the snow at the end of last year, where the light was entirely sourced from the streetlights. This produced an orange image which I tried to correct but couldn't as it simply took on another colour such as green or blue. In the end, I converted it to black & white, which gave quite a nice image because of the shadows.