Reading Light in the Wild: What Street Photography Taught Me About Seeing

Reading Light in the Wild: What Street Photography Taught Me About Seeing

I had a problem last spring. A client wanted environmental portraits shot on location in downtown LA, and I kept coming back to my studio like a dog returning to its bowl. Controlled light. Modifiers I’ve labeled with masking tape. A lighting diagram I can sketch in thirty seconds. The street felt like chaos by comparison. Everything was moving. The light was doing things I hadn’t asked it to do.