The photographer has a tough job - to capture an instant in time. What’s difficult is that the view through the lens is changing constantly - in fact you will never see the same scene twice. Sure, it could be similar, but there is so much detail in there, changing in almost imperceptible ways that even if you delay a shot for a fraction of a second, what you capture may not be what you saw when you decided to take the photo.

The good news is that we can use these fleeting views to our advantage, as all the best landscape photographers do, and we’re going to do it in a very simple way using one of the best lighting systems available - the sun and clouds.

A windy, cloudy day is an absolute godsend to the photographer hoping to capture an interesting landscape scene. As the clouds move past the sun, the shadows on the landscape move also. Given the right mix of light and shade, it’s possible to pick out your subject in a pool of light, while the rest of the landscape is subdued into the background. If you’re very lucky, atmospheric conditions will create a shaft of light from the sky to your intended subject, but that requires a lot of patience!

Below are three examples of a not-too-interesting subject. There’s a piece of farm machinery, a viaduct and a field in the background. They are all taken within the space of a few minutes and apart from cropping and resizing, appear exactly as they came out of the camera…

I was standing in a large field, quite a way back from the subjects and could watch the shadows travelling along the ground, with each of the objects becoming lighter and darker as the shadows passed. Photo A was taken at a point where the background field and foreground machinery were in shade, but the bridge was brightly lit. B is perhaps the worst of the three, with the background field distractingly bright while the foreground subjects are in shadow - this is the sort of accident you will avoid making once you’re aware of transient light. Picture C has the field and viaduct subdued and the machinery brightly lit. Obviously, if this was the intended subject, there are many better compositions than the one shown, but the timing is still ideal for that natural ‘pop’ factor where the subject jumps off its background.

Your challenge this week (weather permitting) is to find yourself in a wide open space where you can watch the shadows of clouds fleeting by on the ground - it needn’t be hilly. See how the light and shade interact with objects in the environment and if possible take a series of photos showing the differences.