Soft and Hard Lighting using natural Light

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  • #18685
    Claudia Samples
    Participant

    Hi there,

    I was out taking lots of Photos the last few Days and hope You’ll be pleased with my two Choices!
    I just love Flowers and Blossoms so much…
    But I have many others in Stock if you will want another Example! 😉

    As you can see by the Title, the first one is an example of Hard Lighting and the second one is for the Soft Lighting! Unfortunately I did not have a Polarized Filter yet, but I have just ordered them incl. a Lighting Set for the Studio/Indoor Photography! 🙂

    I’ll be looking forward to your Critique! Thank You!

    #21235
    Duncan Rawlinson
    Keymaster

    Hi Claudia

    Thanks for sending in your assignment. Also thanks for your patience while there was a break in work around here. (I’m not even supposed to be submitting this right now…) 😛

    Your hard light image is nice and it certainly meets the criteria of hard light for the assignment. So job well done on determining the type of light! If you look at the hard shadows on the flowers you will see just how harsh the light is.

    The image is slightly out of focus if you look at full size. This only becomes a problem if you are trying to make prints of the image at a large scale. To be fair it may actually be in focus it could just be camera shake. Just be careful to nail your focus and or avoid camera shake. In this case don’t worry too much because you we’re just trying to show the light.

    Beyond all of that I have marked some areas of improvement in the image. There is a spider web which could have been interesting. There are also some twigs crossing over which are distracting and could have been avoided. Remember, simplicity often wins! Finally there is some distortion or blurring going on in the corners of the frame which could be the result of some post processing or your lens.

    Now onto your soft light image. This image also meets the criteria of the assignment in that the light is most certainly soft. So job well done here as well with determining the quality of the light.

    The only notes I have for this image are as follows. The image is a bit busy as a result of the long telephoto lens being used. When you ‘zoom’ in quite a bit like this you will notice that there is somewhat of a compression of the frame. In other words the background feels like its pressed up against the foreground. Notice how the leaves and twigs in the very back feel very close to the leaves in the front. This creates quite a busy and cluttered feeling.

    Now you can use this idea of compression to your advantage. For example if you want things to appear to be close together you just go farther away and zoom in… Like in the movies when the person is running in front of a train. It looks like they are going to get hit and they jump out of the way just in time. This is just a trick with a really long zoom lens.

    I’m getting a but ‘derailed’ here but I think you know what I’m getting at. The image is soft light but it’s busy from this compression from your zoom lens.

    All of that said is a nice soft light image!

    Thanks for sending this in. You are doing well!

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