Creeping Shadow Line

Looking into the Modlin Courtyard from a bench outside of Jepson Theater 1:03

It’s a cloudy day so I think the sun is bright, but clouds are passing in front of it making the lit area fluctuate a little bit in terms of brightness. When the light is dim, the shadows are kind of fuzzy like they have been, but when it’s brighter, the shadows are more defined.

The shadow line on the left side of the courtyard is now touching the benches in the middle of the courtyard. I’m going to look at it again when it’s brighter because now there’s not much difference between the lit area and the shaded area, and I can’t tell where the line is. When it became brighter, I noticed that the line is indeed hitting the corners of the benches. I don’t know if the benches have moved at all (I’m pretty sure they haven’t), but the shadow is falling on them more than it had been before. The shadow line is definitely taking up a larger area of the courtyard, so the position of the sun must be changing. It’s getting lower and lower in the sky at this time of day, creating a more horizontal angle with the left courtyard roof (which is creating the shadow). The light is hitting the courtyard at a different angle than it originally had.

I took two pictures of the space today because the light kept changing. One picture was of when the light was at its highest intensity and one was of when the light was at its lowest intensity. The way I’m perceiving the light when the lit area is dim is very interesting. I appears like a gradient to me. The section on the left seems grayer, dimmer, and darker, and I it’s hard for me to tell the difference between the lit area and the shaded area. The right section seems brighter to me, and it seems to act like a gradient from the left shadow line to the right side of the courtyard. This may be because of the angle of the sun or the shadows. After more consideration though, I think it may seem the way it is to me because I have a courtyard column and a dark window divider in front of me dividing the courtyard image in two. So maybe it’s like one of those optical illusions where if you look at two shapes that are the same color but surrounded by different colors, the original colored shapes seem like different colors. So maybe I’m misperceiving the light in the courtyard in this way; maybe the left side only appears darker because it’s surrounded by shadows and the right side only appears lighter because it’s surrounded by more lit area…. Something to think about…

Current mood: I’m distracted; I have a song stuck in my head, and I keep thinking of this couple that was at the airport this morning. I’m cold too. Always. Always cold.

Looking at it again, that shadow line on the left either grew while I was sitting here, or I didn’t look at it carefully enough to begin with. Now when I look at it, it seems to be covering half of the benches that are the most left. Maybe I just wasn’t looking closely enough before, but I can clearly see now that the left shadow-line has definitely grown since last week.