A realization I had at Mitaka Station in March 2020

This is the story of when I had a realization, along with photos I took in the vicinity.

It was the 17th or 18th of March.
I was on my way home after watching a stage rehearsal for work.
I work in stage lighting, and as I was walking home, I was looking at the light, thinking that the light created for the play I had just seen would not be convincing unless it was as realistic as possible.
The final scene, the most important part of this play, takes place about 90 minutes before sunset, just like the time I was heading home.
Looking at the scenery on my way home with that perspective, the sun was quite low, and long shadows were cast on the roads and buildings.

Perhaps it was because I was looking at the real light and shadows while simulating how I would create them on stage myself. I felt a sense of unease about the scene before me.

And then,why is the way the shadows blur different?
I wondered.

It was evening, though the streetlights were not yet on.
The sun was the only light source.
I have lived my whole life without ever questioning this, but it is strange that light, which should be radiating straight out from the sun, is sometimes sharp and sometimes blurry.

What is this? Why do shadows blur?
Do shadows have a 'shadow power' that makes them fade as they stretch?
...Huh?

No, I have been looking at this my whole life and never thought it was unnatural until now; I know this is natural. I understand that.
But why, and by what logic does this happen?

I suddenly found I didn't know.

What is the true nature of this phenomenon?

Perhaps reflections from buildings or the atmosphere are canceling out the shadows.
But this happens even in places with few buildings, and atmospheric reflection separated by Rayleigh scattering (the blue of the sky) casts light over the entire shadow, not just the boundary between light and shadow, so that shouldn't be the cause, and so on...
On my way home, I put thoughts of the stage aside and became obsessed with unraveling this phenomenon, trying to bring my shoes closer to the blurred shadows or hiding the wall shadows with my hands, searching for the boundary between light and shadow.
I think I must have looked suspicious to others.

And that brings me to the photo above, taken on the platform at Mitaka Station.
The shadow of the roof was blurry, while the shadow of the pillar was much sharper in comparison.
I stood in a position where my face was at the boundary of light and shadow for both the roof and the pillar, and while tilting my head toward the shadow side and the light side, I squinted at the sun.

And then I understood.

Since there is a distance of about 3 meters between the roof and the platform floor, light from thespace betweenthat isnot blocked by the roofwraps around diagonally, blurring the edge of the shadow.
And because the pillar extends from the platform floor, there is no room for sunlight to enter diagonally at the base of the pillar where there is almost no distance from the floor, resulting in a sharp shadow; then, the shadow of the part of the pillar further from the floor (that is, higher up) gradually blurs due to the sunlight entering the space diagonally.

Oh. God, I've realized it.

The sun is an area light source.

This is
"the exact same phenomenon where the closer a subject gets to a softbox (area light source), the softer the shadow becomes"
as that.

I missed a train, feeling as if I had experienced something akin to Newton discovering gravity or Copernicus discovering that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Looking at things with the perspective that the sun is an area light source, I feel like the resolution of how I perceive light in daily life has increased a little.
Power lines are far from the ground and walls, and because they are thin, sunlight wraps around from both sides, sometimes making the shadows so faint they almost disappear. And shadows cast on the ground by objects close to the ground are distinct.
With this, perhaps I have finally become able to tell how far an object is from the ground just by looking at the edges of the shadow it casts. A completely useless ability.

Even the softly beautiful dappled sunlight, if you climb a stepladder and put your hand into the light leaking directly beneath the leaves, the shadow cast there will surely not be soft.

Beautiful shadows, beautiful light, beautiful transmitted light, beautiful reflected light.
Beautiful gradations of shadows.
What a wonderful world (with the best pronunciation you can imagine).

After I had spent some time observing the sunlight and shadows and felt settled,
I began planning the stage lighting as originally intended.

As I wrote earlier, the last scene is set about 90 minutes before sunset. The location is a real place, and I knew the cardinal directions, so at that time of day, the sun should have been setting toward the audience side.
Furthermore, the setting includes an unfinished steel tower on the audience side, so in reality, the evening sun would be casting the shadow of that tower onto the stage area. I decided to try and recreate the shadow of that steel tower on the stage.

On the day of the setup, I installed the lighting along with the set at the theater, and I tried projecting the shadow of the steel tower onto the stage with the edges blurred.

However, something was wrong.
Something felt unnatural.

I tried sharpening the edges.

It looked very natural.
The steel tower is at a distance, and the steel frame isn't that thick, so the shadow should naturally be blurred by the sunlight wrapping around it. That is indeed what happens at the actual location.
But on stage, it felt unnatural.
Why is that? Of course, it might be due to my own lack of skill. But my expressive ability wouldn't suddenly improve on-site just because I was in a bind.

I made this judgment.
As a matter of stage lighting expression, I would prioritize what looks less awkward on stage over what 'should happen in reality'.Because this is expression, not realism.
So, despite this discovery, I ended up not being able to make use of it. I am sure there must have been a way to make it work in a more realistic direction, so I keenly feel my lack of ability.

However, looking on the bright side, I have found a new research topic.

The stage production continued,
and in the meantime, requests to refrain from going out on weekends were issued,
cherry blossoms bloomed, snow fell, and the state of emergency was declared in Tokyo.

This play became my last job before the state of emergency.
Since then, I have not yet been able to experiment with this research topic.

All photos were taken with a LEICA M9 and Voigtländer ULTRON 28mm.

Ah, I want to go out and take photos too.

The End
May 16, 2020

(It would encourage me if you could press the ♡ button or register for the magazine!)
Things like light wrapping around from an angle are explained in↓.
Please check it out if you are interested.

Here are other articles where I contemplated light ↓