Soft Light Photography

I found this type of procedure an interesting method of turning  a an ordinary photo into a dream like photo.

It really helped me master the, concept of layers and mask, which was a conept I was truly falling behind.

the great thing about Soft Light  Portraits is the amount of different effects that can be applied to different layers and masks to bring it all together in a final composition in the end photo,

I personally like the Blending modes and use of gradients over a layer mask to totally change the atmosphere of the original

Soft light can also dramatically change the mood giving a dream like mythical appearance,

I can see my self using this as a Personalised gift or card making serving with the recipients picture on the front and adding dreamy soft light wishing happy birthday or such other greetings

 

The gradual tones of the foliage in the background were achieved by a gradient over a layer mask and changing the blending mode and revealing underneath

 

So what is soft light?  It is a light which has a wide gray zone.  It means that the light won’t cause harsh shadows under people’s noses, or under their chins, etc.  Soft lighting does not show texture (such as pimples, wrinkles, blemishes, leprosy, etc) as well as hard light.  This is one reason why soft light is generally more amenable to portrait photography, because we want the light to wrap around the texture on our skin so we don’t show off our blemishes.  Remember: the softer the light, the wider the gray zone.  The harder the light, the narrower the gray zone.

 

What makes light soft?

 

One thing, and one thing alone makes lighting soft: size.  It is not about how bright the light source is, nor how diffused the light source is, nor anything else.  It’s all about size.  The larger the light source, the softer the light.  This explains when photographers shoot  flash units into umbrellas.  The flash unit itself is only a few inches wide, but when you shoot it into an umbrella, it becomes 43 inches  in diameter!  Making the light large makes it soft.  The same is true with the relative size.  If you’re shooting a portrait of someone and the light is too hard, do you put the flash closer or further away from the person?  It may surprise you that the answer is to put the flash closer to the subject.  When the light is closer, it seems larger than if the light is further away.  This relative size of the flash also affects softness.

What about natural light outdoors?  Now you know why shooting portraits, or even wildlife, in mid-day lighting from the sun is so horribly ugly.  The light, while giant in terms of actual size, is only a puny little dot in the sky.  This small relative size of the sun makes for hard light.  Portrait photographers always hope for a cloudy day when shooting outdoors.  The clouds spread the size of the sun to make it relatively larger, which produces softer light.

The above explanation gives a fundamental knowledge of why and how they get soft light in the studio,

which is handy to know also when it comes to editing and achieving the same effects in Photoshop