Light is Everything

Nordic Root #2 

From my perch above the sea, the Nordic sky provides a cinematic display every day. The low-riding sun gives off a sparse, soft light, sometimes nothing at all. On such days, the horizon is but a faint demarkation of the separation of earth and sky. When the sun bursts through the cruel gray and cast a dark, dreamy moon light, I know once again, light is everything.

Light is language

It was a fascinating with the light that drew me to black and white film photography. I was working with video production and noticed the power of the light to create mood and shape expression. I wanted to learn the light language.

Rather than seduce with saturated colors, I wanted to engage emotion, mystery and imagination. The starkness of black and white allows for the essential to appear. 

The winter light has my attention. Not just because I need it, but because it evokes in me – feeling.  While captured in color, it seems to offer a palette similar to that of black and white photography. 

Seeing is feeling

Photography has taught me how to see. Seeing to me is feeling. Making pictures is a visceral experience – quite literally, to be touched by the light.

For years now, I've been looking at the light, discovering the way it illuminates a face, outlines a body scape, highlights a curve, a smile, a gesture of a hand, and leaves everything unsaid in the shade. One moment it's a soft, seductive caress, the next a harsh spotlight impossible to escape. 

While the quality of the light sets the mood, I like to think of it as a paint brush with which, I try to paint the picture.

The light shows us what to notice, what to dismiss and where we need to look closer.

The real quest, of course, in picture making, in any attempt to truly see, is to find the hidden light - to draw out the inner radiance. 

When I look at the winter sky, I'm secretly willing the light to touch me. 

The light is helping me feel my way back...

To language. To painting. To making the moment. 

Shall we paint the sky red? 

(Photos shot in Helsingor on iphone)