Softer Light by Bouncing It

SCOTT KELBY

Another popular way to soften the quality of your light is to bounce your light off a ceiling. This does three wonderful things: (1) When your small, direct flash of light hits the large ceiling, it spreads out big time, so the quality of the light that falls back onto your subject is much wider and much softer. It immediately takes the harshness out of your flash, and gives you better quality light. (2) Because the light is now coming from above, it’s no longer that one-dimensional, straight-on flash—now it’s directional flash, which creates nice shadows and lots of dimension for your subject’s face, and as a bonus (3) it keeps you from having harsh shadows on the wall behind your subject. Because the light is coming from above (down from the ceiling), the shadows appear on the floor behind your subject, not on the wall behind them. Plus, because the light is softer, the shadows are softer, too. So, if this bouncing off the ceiling technique is so great, why don’t we use it all the time? Well, there are a number of reasons: (1) There’s not always a ceiling you can bounce off. Sometimes you’re outdoors, or (2) the ceiling is too high to bounce off of (like in a church). If the ceiling is much higher than about 10 feet, the bounce trick really doesn’t work because the light has too far to travel up and back, and your subject doesn’t get properly lit. Of course there’s also (3) the fact that light picks up the color of what it hits, so if the ceiling is yellowish, your light becomes yellowish, and your subject will now appear (come on, say it with me) yellowish! However, if it’s an 8′or 9′ white ceiling—you’re set.