From the course: Flash Photography: Nikon Speedlites

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Creating soft light

Creating soft light - Speedlite Flash Tutorial

From the course: Flash Photography: Nikon Speedlites

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Creating soft light

- Now let's do some exercises around the quality of light. Quality of light is talking about soft light and hard light. A soft light has a really gentle gradation between the light and the shadow, especially on a subject's face. Hard light has a definite line where a shadow begins and where the light stops. Soft lights are generally more flattering. They fill in creases and blemishes on faces, whereas hard lights define those things. We can make soft light using the flash on the camera. First of all, let me show you what the flash looks like pointed straight forward at my subject. And it's not very beautiful. When we look at this picture, we see that the shadows are blasted away from the camera. There's a shadow there behind her head. Let me zoom in there for you. The shadow behind her head is on the wall back there. And then, the shadow from her jaw is extremely sharp. If she had any crinkles or lines in her skin, we would see those very clearly here too. So the simplest way to…

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