Rowing boat tied up

Once upon a time I was ahead of myself with posts on the blog, but unfortunately lately I seem to have caught up with most of the scheduled posts and half-written drafts.  Wanting to get a post online today I am dipping into a recent collection of photos from my September holiday to Dubrovnik, despite having already devoted a week to that trip on my return.  If that’s not enough for a sense of deja-vue to set in, then surely yet another photo of a rowing boat will all but guarantee that you feel you’ve seen this one already.  But I promise, you haven’t.

This shot was taken as I walked around the harbour in Pomena, home to Mljet’s only hotel, and consequently a little more developed than the rest of the national park which makes up most of the island.

I’m beginning to think that I have a thing for photographing boats (much like my thing for cobblestones perhaps) since I found I couldn’t walk past this scene of the rowing boat tied up the the jetty without first photographing it.

It may have to do with the way the light was falling on the boat.  The shot is lit by one very large light source but one that is a long way away – 93 million miles away in fact – making it small relative to the subject.  That source, the sun, was setting at the time of the shot and west corresponds to camera left.  Because the source is small, the light is hard.  This means the shadows have well-defined edges, and the transition from shadow to lit is abrupt.

To pick up for a moment again on what I discussed yesterday, understanding this terminology and being able to read a photo in this way is important to improve your own lighting skills… even if it is just a case of being able to figure out, after the fact, what it was about the light on a subject that initially caught your eye and prompted you to capture it with your camera, as was the case here.

For this subject I think the hard light falling on the subject not only lights the boat nicely, but also lights its reflection.  Meanwhile the low angle of the light means that the reflection is clear to see because not much of the sea bed beneath the boat is receiving light.  I think it is that which caught my eye and caused me to stop for a moment to get the shot.