Light here is an elusive thing. We start each day fully intending to use the greater part of it shooting in the sunlight, but morning preparations usually mean we are on location by noon at the earliest, setting up, hoping the high sun will start to set a little, lengthening shadows in a prettier way. Then, we are left with three good hours, maybe four, to get done what we can. When the sun slips behind the mountain, it is like someone has just flipped a light- and heat-switch.Yesterday as we were shooting in a blackened, ancient volcanic site, I could feel the sun begin to set before my eyes sensed it...an incremental cooling of the light made me look to the hills where the sun was neatly cradled between two mountaintops. Then we watched the shadows quickly lengthening while we snapped the last few pictures.
I'm told one feature of James Turrell's almost-complete Roden Crater project will be a special seat facing a special window that will frame the sky and the sun in such a way that, as the earth rotates, one will be able to physically feel the incremental revolution.
If Roden Crater never gets finished, or if the waiting list to see it is a lifetime long, I know another place you can feel the earth this way - a sense that we are actually standing on a slowly spinning ball, hovering in space, at intervals facing the light and warmth of the sun.
