Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #97 is a primer on how to use hard light. Hard light is trick­ier to use than soft light but there is NO rea­son to avoid using it. It just needs to be used appro­pri­ately. Part of using hard light and shadow in pho­tog­ra­phy is being very aware of where the shad­ows will fall and chang­ing your posi­tion or your light­ing if you don’t like where they fall.

Here’s a cou­ple of basic points when using hard light in photography:

- Hard light comes from a small light source rel­a­tive to your sub­ject. The sun IS a small light source in this respect because it is 93 mil­lion miles away from the earth.
- Hard light pro­duces hard shad­ows which are good in many cases espe­cially to reveal form.
- The far­ther the light source is from the sub­ject, the HARDER the shad­ows.
- The far­ther away the light source is from the sub­ject, the SHORTER the shadows.

To prove this to your­self take a flash­light into the bath­room and shut off the lights. Shine the light on your fin­ger in front of the wall. Move the light around and you will learn a ton about shadows.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
June’s reg­u­lar assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Break­ing the rules
June’s level 2 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Cre­ative self portraits

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

If you are inter­ested in writ­ing for our blog please con­tact me photography.ca (   A   T  ) G m ail  Dot co m (using stan­dard email formatting)

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks to forum mem­bers North­Stone, Wicked Dark, Howard J,  KawarthaBob and Jonny Hot­shoe who posted  blog com­ments about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. |Sub­scribe with iTunes |Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe with Google Reader|Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load