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No Flash Corner
Daily Ink
Stored in: Technique
Posted On: September 29 2006
By: Bryan Partington
Photo © whileseated
Welcome to "No Flash Corner", an oppressively urban intersection in San Francisco where the photons do funny things and the environment takes on an air of the surreal.
Photoblogger and flickr user whileseated writes a tour de force blog post about his favourite shooting spot, along with a flickr map to the place.
He describes the reasons for his affection like this:
I've photographed a particular intersection that's bathed in incredible light for a very short period of time...subjects are brightly lit from two directions at once... If you’re interested in a combination of extraordinary natural light and the serendipity of street photography, it can’t be beat. Trouble is, it’s seasonal, and extremely fickle. If it’s the slightest bit foggy, it’s just any other corner in the city (with a swell neutral backdrop).
The effect is electric, like intense fill flash without the intense fill flash. And the diagram he presents to explain the dynamics of the place is incredibly interesting.
The yellow line shows how things work from April through September. When the sun reaches a point in the sky just north of Post (sometime between 4&6pm, depending on the season), it’ll reflect off the mirrored building due East of noflashcorner. Your subjects, if they’re standing in the right spot, will be brightly lit from two directions at the exact same time. In the fall (the red line), light reflects off a blue-mirrored building (the light isn’t very strong), and bounces down on noflashcorner and three blocks of Grant St.
The results are pretty amazing. Check out whileseated's "No Flash Corner" flickr set, his video clip of the spot and all sorts of shots from all sorts of places over at his amazing photoblog: whileseated.org.
Otherwise, in Technique:
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Utata Ink is a daily publication edited by Bryan Partington (striatic). Photos used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and obtained via the flickr API unless otherwise noted. To make a contribution to Ink, please visit Ink Me.
