Watch the magic:

The following pictures are of a wooden bridge over a fish pond at the Imaginarium in Nevada City, California.

(--- Please scroll way down to see image # 1 and # 2 ---)

The first image was taken at 8:30 in the morning. The colors in this picture are more warm, with pops of yellow light forming a quilt of interesting patterns on the ground and framework of the bridge. There are highlights splashed on the huge pine trees behind the bridge, as the sun is peeking out from around the building behind me (the photographer). Long morning shadows stretch out across the dirt, and the shade from the trees forms a dark area just beyond the bridge towards the street. This area could almost be mistaken for another body of water due to its dark shadowing. The bridge is lighter in value here. The contrast here is deep and interesting, with a bright hue forming wherever the morning sun hits.

The second image was taken at 4:00 in the afternoon. Here, we can see that the colors appear to be much more cool. It “feels” shady here, much different than the way you would feel standing in the morning sun of the first image. The colors are analogous here on the bridge and stepping stones beyond. They appear very close in color, while the first image captures the interesting differences in the stepping stones texture and color. The shadow beyond the pond is now completely absent, and the viewer can see that there the path continues as well and more vegetation. Warmth creeps only into the background of this image, picked up in the patch of classic red Grass Valley dirt on the hill across the street. In the first image, this patch is blocked by both morning shadows and a passing truck. In image two, the sky is reflecting in the water of the pond, while the sun wasn’t up high enough in the sky to create the same effect in image number one. Image one has light penetrating the water from a very low ground level, which tells the viewer that the sun (the light source) had yet to climb high up into the sky during that time of the day. The green colors in image two are more vivid, and consume more of the saturation and intensity of the scene compared to image number one.