Raining Light

I've seen this technique done a few times in the past. It's kind of a cool use of an umbrella. Finally I've got around to doing it.

Set up is really simple, half it is what you see in the photo. What you don't see in the picture is the snooted strobe just off to the left. It's shooting light up into the umbrella. It's a super simple set up.

The strobe (a 560 at 1/4) is snooted so that a minimal of hard light hits Madison. I wanted the light to be a soft of possible, so all the light would have to come from the umbrella. Light from the strobe is from such a small light source, it casts hard shadows and doesn't look great.

But the umbrella casts beautiful light. Especially being so close to her. She is literally get wrapped up in beautiful, soft, glowing light. You can see how the light around her falls off so gradually.

There is some lighting on here arm and on the camera from the strobe. But that's okay. The camera is shielding her face from the hard light, so while the hard light enhances the camera and its hard angles, her faces is lit by the soft light of the umbrella.

Camera settings are 1/200, 2.2, ISO 100. 50mm on a 7D. No significant comments. 

In Lr I painted over her with a brush that upped the clarity to bring of the highlights and textures more, as well as a brush that upped the saturation. I did not paint over her face, but instead raised the highlights on her cheek bones. That's all I did. This is straight out of the camera for the most part. 

Let's talk about light for a second. Soft light and hard light. When to use one opposed to the other? The norm is to use soft light to make things look soft, romantic, beautiful, ect. It gets rid of sharp angles by filling in shadows. It also makes things look smoother because it fills in shadows that would give away the small inconsistencies in a texture. This is why almost all photo shoots use soft light for models. It makes then look like they have better skin and what not.  

As far as hard light goes, use it to make things look sharp, defined, or textured. It's used to cast nice shadows because, as the name implies, it casts hard, sharp shadows. 

How you use light is really depended on the photo you are taking and how you want to portray something. I personally like soft light for almost everything. The times I use hard light is when I want to cast shadows, show a harshness in a subject, imitate the sun, or get a nice texture. As you play with light, you'll get a feel for what quality of light to use for different situations. And don't forget its either or. You can mix two light qualities quite easily and effectively. Use hard light to get good highlights and use a soft light as a fill to lighten up the shadows, for example. There are infinite combinations of ways to use light.

That's it for now, see you tomorrow.