Softening the Light

For this exercise I used a small bronze statue of two horses, as it provided plenty of surface detail and nooks and crannies to hold shadows. I placed it on a box covered with black cloth (oh for a piece of velvet!), and hung another black cloth several feet behind it for the background. The lens was a 150mm macro about 6 feet from the subject. I used a studio flash head with a standard 10 inch reflector as the undiffused light, and an umbrella diffuser for the second shot. Both lights were directly overhead. I used manual exposure judged from a grey card placed at the same position, putting the "peak" at the centre of the histogram.

1. Undiffused light: the shadows are more localised, hard-edged and defined, giving a more contrasty image, with specular reflections from the shiny surfaces.

2. With diffuser: Softer edged shadows, with some light spill onto the horses' bodies. The rough ground area appears less sharp and contrasty than the image above. There is a slight loss of light from the use of the diffuser, which I intentionally didn't allow for to see the effect.

The diffused image is probably better in this circumstance as it gives a bit more modelling to the horses without losing the dramatic effect of the overhead light.