Light in the Urban Environment
As you walk through any city during daylight hours, you’ll gradually realises how light plays through urban structures; the way it reflects and bounces off reflective surfaces like steel and glass, and the way in which concrete walls and structures control the spill of light as it spills between narrow laneways, grazes the edges of staircases and transforms glass, steel and stone into bold arrangements of shape and shadow.
A classic example of a partially lit urban environment. By training your eye to look for light, instead of structures or subjects, you’ll soon find scenes like this.
This article explains how you can shoot and capture these scenes by exposing for highlights (by underexposing your image), to make the bright aspects pop against the darker shadows around them.
For photographers, these shafts and pools of light make for interesting urban captures. Instead of photographing whole buildings, we begin searching for instances when directional light strikes a facade or a street scape, the sharp boundary where light gives way to shadow. These are scenes where the right exposure and strong composition can work to produce images that are dramatic, elegant and impactful in their simplicity.
When capturing scenes like that, we need to be selective about what it is we want in the frame, and how we want to include it. Some of the most striking urban photographs hone in on contrast, allowing brilliant highlights to coexist with deep, mysterious shadows, often using shadows as negative space to frame the highlights.
In urban environments, particularly during Winter, light becomes beautifully directional, creating long shadows, crisp edges and dramatic patterns across buildings. It’s a great way to train your eye to “see the light” and to compose for it.
Scenes with splashes of lit areas surrounded by shadows are what we call “high contrast scenes” — which means that we have areas that are very dark, and areas that are very bright, and very little in between. To capture resonant and evocative light like this, you need to learn how to expose for the highlights.
Exposing for Highlights
Modern digital cameras retain an impressive amount of information in the shadows, but once highlights are blown, that detail is usually gone forever. Before taking the photograph, identify the brightest area that matters most in your composition. This might be a sunlit wall, a bright window reflecting the sunlight, or the illuminated edge of a staircase. Meter for that area, or underexpose by around about one stop (-1 EV) or a little more. Adjust the underexposure for the kind of dramatic scene you’d like to create. Your photograph may appear darker overall, but the important highlight detail will remain intact.
Don’t rely solely on the camera’s rear screen when checking exposure. Bright daylight can make images appear darker than they really are. Instead, develop the habit of checking the Histogram. Ideally, the graph should approach the right-hand edge without touching it or bunching up against it or being clipped off at the right. If highlight warnings begin flashing, reduce your exposure slightly using negative exposure compensation. A quick adjustment of -0.7 to -1.3 EV is often all that’s needed to protect delicate highlight detail; more if you’d like the shadows to be more dominant. This method of underexposure using the histogram is called “expose to the left” (ETTL).
Settings
For many situations, Aperture Priority mode combined with exposure compensation will be sufficient for you to capture scenes like this. Set the aperture that gives you the desired depth of field (usually f/8 if shooting urban abstracts), keep your ISO low—typically ISO 200 or 400—and allow the shutter speed to adjust automatically.
If the lighting is consistent, switching to Manual Exposure prevents your camera from changing the exposure every time you recompose. Still use the -0.7 to -1.3 (or more) under exposure on your Manual meter to preserve the highlights.
Seeing the Light
Underexposure is only half the story. Learning to see the light is what transforms ordinary scenes into compelling images.
Instead of photographing the entire building, look for a single section that catches the light while the surrounding areas disappear into darkness. Stop looking for interesting subjects and start looking for interesting light. Your eye will begin noticing bright patches of sunlight before it notices buildings.
Equally important are the shadows. In this style of photography, shadow is one of your greatest compositional tools. Deep areas of darkness create negative space that simplifies an image and directs the viewer’s attention exactly where you want it. They hide distractions, isolate architectural details, and can help create minimalist compositions. Think of shadows not as missing information, but as bold graphic shapes that balance the composition.
Don’t forget to explore the edges of buildings. Some of the most compelling architectural abstracts occur where light is just beginning—or just ending. Walk around a structure and observe how sunlight wraps around corners, revealing one surface while plunging another into darkness. Often, moving only a metre or two completely changes the relationship between light and shadow.
Not every shadow needs detail. Allow blacks to become truly black when they enhance your composition. By exposing for the highlights and letting the shadows fall naturally, you create photographs with mood, depth and visual impact. Shooting in RAW gives you the flexibility to recover subtle shadow detail later if needed, but the goal should never be to reveal everything.
The next time you’re wandering through city streets, photograph the light that falls upon them. Look for the interplay between between lit shapes and surfaces, and shadow. When you begin seeing light as your subject, the city transforms into an endless gallery of abstract compositions waiting for you to find them.
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