toward the light

Toward the Light is my experience exploring the distinctive qualities of light in Cleveland, Ohio, where I live.
I know very little about the physics of light, and I am a self-trained photographer, so I can’t speak technically about it. But in my experience Cleveland light has its own character perhaps shared somewhat with other parts of the Great Lakes region.
It may have something to do with the latitude, though I doubt it, because the light in San Francisco, where I spend part of my year, is also of the same latitude but seems sharper.
I suspect it has to do with the humidity caused by lake Erie. The evaporation over the lake and drifting condensation over the land produce what locals know as a Cleveland sky, dense and lowering in the winter, high and soft and sculptural in the summer—a sky unseen anywhere else I have traveled. The resulting environment is a narrow rain forest along the lakeshore that fades away into the drier climate of central Ohio. Near the lake, the lambency of a humid August morning bathes the air with a light that rises from the ground, and Spring fog swaddles new foliage with a pale florescent glow as it floats in the air. Throughout the seasons, Cleveland light is always soft and forgiving.
Apart from the lake, there is so much water in the Cleveland environment—puddles, ponds, streams, rivers, marshes–that light is always rising from reflective sources to surprise the eye as it moves through the landscape. Even in deep woods, trees can be momentarily foot-lighted by pools of stagnant water as beams of passing light shoot through gaps in the foliage overhead.
What light falls on or passes through has much to do with how the quality of light expresses itself. Forest City was Cleveland’s original name and remains its nickname today, a testament to the density and extent of woods that cover the sinuous moraines deposited by the glaciers that formed the Great Lakes. It is possible, of course, thanks to architecture and agriculture, to escapes the woods and gaze directly at the sky, but the characteristic Cleveland experience—urban, suburban, exurban and rural—is still the walk under foliage or, in winter, its vast skeletal framework.
One thing I’ve learned photographing Cleveland is that leaves are always translucent. They can be almost opaque when plump with moisture and green with chlorophyll, but by Fall they have become thin, veiny, even lacy with only their ribs impeding the passage of light. The vast majority of Cleveland’s trees are deciduous, and the variety is unrivaled, meaning the shapes and colors of leaves seem infinitely varied. And the colors are in constant change, from the first lime-green buds of April to the last tan oak leaves clinging to bare limbs in January. Every variety has its distinctive palette throughout the seasons, so Cleveland autumn displays are distinct, if not for their brightness at least for their range of color. Light is constantly being filtered and colored by foliage through most of the year. And if that isn’t enough variety, the foliage, for the most part, is in steady, delicate motion. To the black and white photographer, this means the tonal range in a landscape can be so subtle that edges often blur.
Whatever the reasons, the light in Cleveland is alive, and the eye must be fully present to witness it.