A couple of months ago, I did some photography prompts. Recently, I reviewed these photos and was pleasantly surprised how much I still liked them. I took photos I wouldn’t normally take, and saw new things.

Now that I’m in a new place, paradoxically I am short on photo inspiration. Everything is so interesting that it can be hard to zero in, especially when work, grocery stores, bars, and walking paths are new forms of shiny distractions. So today I’m posting one of my prior photography prompts, and I hope to continue with more in the future.

Today’s prompt is “photographing light”. This is not the same as photographing shadows cast by light, it is photographing the light itself. I got this prompt from the Lynda.com photographic composition course by Ben Long. I took these pictures on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville in the early evening, not quite at golden hour, but late enough in the day that the windows were casting reflections in interesting places.

In this picture, I liked the way the reflections from different buildings interacted, and how they contrasted with the brick pattern.

In this photo, the windows from across the street are reflecting light onto shadowed windows. The reflections allow you to see shapes in the windows that you couldn’t see by looking at them directly, plus the contrast simply pleases me.

A distant window cast light onto this crosswalk aid. I almost ignored it, as one does with crosswalks one does not need, but with this small and brilliant beam of light, the guide suddenly was radiant. I loved the simple colors in this one, turning it b+w would have stripped it of so much.