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Hard Sunlight |
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Soft Sunlight |
I've mentioned the "quality of light" a few times
now, what the heck am I trying to say? Light can be
presented in a couple of different ways: hard and soft.
 Hard
light will create hard edged shadows and very strong,
very white highlights, and
is most often created by a single light source that is usually
pretty far from the subject.
Soft light creates softer,
more diffuse shadows that melt into the midtones pretty
easily. The best natural source for both types of light
is the sun. When you're out on a cloudless day the
shadows cast by you and everything else have pretty
sharp and harsh edges and you have hard light. The
shadows cast with hard light seem pretty deep and dark
because everything else around the shadow is so bright.
You can see this in photographs when there are really
harsh shadows on people and they're squinting into the
camera. Naked sunlight creates these harsh shadows. On a
cloudy day, cast shadows are softer and more diffuse
because the naked sunlight hits the clouds and then the
sunlight is spread across the body of the cloud,
diffusing it. On a completely overcast day cast shadows
are going to be really soft and have really blurry edges
so much so that you may not be able to see the edge of
the shadow. The light that we do see on a completely
overcast day is what is called Ambient Light. The light
is so evenly dispersed that it's difficult to determine
where the light is coming from at all.
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Hard sunlight on a face |
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Soft light in a Glamour photo |
In your drawings, the shadows that you want to create
are going to depend on the quality of light that you
cast on your subjects. If you want softer, more gradual
shadows, create a situation that will use soft light.
Soft light is often used in fashion photography because
the light is so even that the minute pits and hills on
the model's complexion are minimized to the point of
invisibility. If a hard light were used in fashion
photography we'd see all the little imperfections on the
model's body. Soft light is flattering to people, hard
light is not. Most household light bulbs give off soft
light because the white frosting on the bulb acts like a
cloud and diffuses and softens the light. A bulb with
clear glass will give hard light because there is
nothing on the bulb to diffuse or soften the light. Hard
light is often used for dramatic or moody effect, to
drive a point home, or to frighten. Hard light is often
seen unintentionally in candid photographs because the
standard flash on a camera is a hard light source. It's
a small, naked, bulb, which by definition is a hard
light. whenever you can get away with it, don't use the
flash on your camera, try and use as much soft, ambient
light as you can. Of course, if you want hard light use
your flash.
OK, now that we understand light and shadow let's draw
some of that stuff! |
