My Shack, Different Light
Originally published January 2016 and most recently updated May 23,2021.
My Shack, Different Light is the subject of this blog. Readers and alumni have asked how I have treated a subject time and time again and made it different each time. Others have said, “I photographed that two hours ago.” Yeah, but the light is different now.
In fact, the light is ever-changing; it is ephemeral and continually surprises us with her new renditions. There is a location I have photographed for years on the Outer Banks, and we return to it time and time again. Why? Because, as noted above, the light is always different.
In this case, we were treated to a red sky the likes of which I have never seen repeated there in quite the same way. This was also one of my early panos.
That same fall, within a two-week period, I made three more photographs from this location. Two were made only eight minutes apart.
Four, quite different looks above, different weather patterns, different light. My Shack, always different.
Skipping ahead two years, three more images shot on two successive days. This was the one from that first day …
The following day, we returned, and the next two images were made eleven minutes apart. Yes, I double-checked the metadata. Eleven measly minutes apart, almost to the second. Ahhh, but what a difference those few eleven minutes made!
And yes, they are in the correct capture-time order. I double-checked that, too.
That following spring, I found yet a different look, a different weather pattern, different light.
“Why ‘My’ Shack,” you may ask? In 2012 there was a little weather that came along the East Coast. Called Superstorm Sandy, it wreaked havoc and did a devastating amount of damage, particularly when it headed inland to the Jersey Coast after passing close to us.
My shack was gone!
Left only with its bare bones, I still found ways to appreciate its various looks. A year or so afterwards, I made these two images a little less than an hour apart, but what a difference in the light …
Or just a year later, two shots done about a week apart. Similar, but definitely My Shack, Different Light.
A few years later, I returned to this location to check it out again…
And I found it interesting that while different, the light was similar to one made above several years earlier.
So, the next time you even think, “Well, I’ve shot that before,” STOP! Re think and return time and time again. Remember, My Shack, Different Light.
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