It was an exceptional sensation, reading by spiderlight.
Available light is any damn light that is available!
Today's photographers think differently. Many can't see real light anymore. They think only in terms of strobe - sure, it all looks beautiful but it's not really seeing. If you have the eyes to see it, the nuances of light are already there on the subject's face. If your thinking is confined to strobe light sources, your palette becomes very mean - which is the reason I photograph only in available light.
I always think of shade as being full of light. That is why I like to use the word shade rather than light and shadow. Shade seems to play over the thing, envelop it, better define it, while shadow seems to fall on the thing and stain the surface with darks.
What's the best type of light? Why that would be available light... and by available light I mean any damn light is available.
Remember...we don't see objects, we see light. [...] Light can do anything water can do--flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do--paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always light in a room.
Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult - the atmosphere of lamps and moonlight.
Daylight, full of small dancing particles. Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
You have the sky overhead giving one light; then the reflected light from whatever reflects; then the direct light of the sun; so that, in the blending and suffusing of these several luminations, there is no such thing as a line to be seen anywhere.
