When it comes to hard like most people run away in fear, so I'm going to show you how to actually handle hardlight. I absolutely adore Hard Light. Most photographers run away from hard light. Remember what hard light was a small light source. So this is an image where we've got some terrible lighting. According to a lot of photographers, they're just going to say, well, you need to get a sunset you need to get in the evening.

I'm saying no, you can use whatever light is there. Remember, commercial photographer, we're booked in, we turn up on the day, we can't control the weather, we can't control the light, we have to use what we have. So here we are. In this instance, we've got a real light, hard light source. Now you won't see it at first because of the way I've taken this picture. And you're looking at and you think but it's so soft.

Have you got the light on her face. So So what's actually happening is if you look at the baby's heart, this is a really, really Right day with the sun practically directly overhead. And what's happened is overhead, but it's behind her. Now on a really bright daylight this the light is behind is going to create a highlight or we're going to backlight the subject. And we're going to get this lovely sort of highlight around the edge and around the top of the subject is really going to stand out and just have a look around the hair. Just see that now the light going around the edge of the hair.

So if you're imagining where the light is right now, the light is behind the subject and very high above and you can tell that because of how far it goes forward on the head. So how are we going to deal with that? Well, there's a couple of things we need to understand. The sun is such a powerful light source on a sunny day like this, that even though it's behind her the rest of the sky because it's so clear and it's blue, the atmosphere actually bounces light back. So we've got a really bright light source behind the subject. And that sun will then bounce forward onto the atmosphere and back onto the face.

Often if you have a cloud, so if you have the sun behind the subject and a cloud behind you as the photographer, that is absolutely awesome because that's going to create something very similar to what we've got here, the sun is going to light the back of our hair is going to hit the cloud. And then it's going to bounce back onto her face. So we've got beautiful rim light, which is what we call that and then we've got a soft light on the front of the face. Now the other thing is this, my background, I'm very careful about my background here because my background is dark. Now if I had the sky behind it, what would happen was the edge of her hair would disappear completely. But because of this hard light shining from behind her, creating this rim, I need to make sure she's standing against a dark background so that we can see that rim and in this instance, we Got some trees.

So this is a park, we can place her then in front of the trees, the sun behind her hair that above and behind, I'm facing directly into the sun, the light is bouncing from the sun into the sky, I'm probably thinking if I remember there was a cloud behind me a large cloud bank, which was reflecting the light back into the face. But even sometimes that's that's the optimum when it comes to highlight even when it's just an open sky, we can still get that effect. So we've got rim light, and we're bouncing the hard light into a soft light source and coming back now know that sounds really complicated. This is a little bit of a tough technique. But if you can master this you can take a picture anywhere in any light and when it comes to then learning studio photography or flash photography, it's going to be second nature to you because you'll know what rim light is and you'll know what to bounce a real soft light source or create a nice soft light source shining onto the subject.

And then we've got the emotion then we've got the taking the picture I have this young girl and she's absolutely loving, holding this baby, which isn't hers, and we get this really powerful, dramatic compelling image, especially love the smile and everything. Now a lot of times of talk was to say you need to see the eyes. You know what guys, sometimes you just need emotion. We'll talk about that a little bit later on. Really love this image. Same shoe.

Again, exactly the same, but now we've created a black and white different subject. You can see the lights the same as coming from behind as a dark background. That hard light behind is bouncing on to the sky or cloud behind me coming back light and her face nice and soft, and hardly any shadow on her face. It's so soft, and we get this beautiful, compelling, powerful image because the hair stands out against the background. We can see it we can see the highlights. You know she was very natural in front of the camera so she was very happy to be in front of the camera.

Didn't have to tell it to do anything. She just knew how to look in front of camera. And we've got this beautiful image and this isn't this isn't like a one hour photo session. This is a snap. This is a, you know, two minutes with the person getting the photograph. So again, backlighting with a hard light source on a clear day is going to give you some really interesting powerful images, especially if you've got the backlight or a sun above and behind the subject and a cloud behind you.

Now this photo is just completely an utterly form hardlight is a sun in the sky directly above worst scenario, worst case, photography opportunity in the world or so some people would think but I love this image. I love the way the light is it's overexposed on the app. I love the way we get this the shadow the sense of mystery, this hiding of the eyes and the revealing of the lips, a little little bit of the skin tone. And then the top cutting through just the contrast between the highs and the lows. What I'm showing you here guys is don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of creating compelling images that break the rules.

The greats did it. They were fantastic at it. They understood the rules of photography, and they ignored them. And this was a harsh shadow, but use it create interesting, compelling thing. Now we're not going to show you editing in this particular course we create another course where we can show you some real quick simple editing techniques. Keep an eye out for that.

But what you can do is if you take an image, so many pieces of software these days, try some different filters. Play with filters is a great way to get an image and start creating different looks. So if you're on an iPhone or something like that, or maybe even taking your picture on a normal camera now upload them to some like Google Photos online. download them to your phone Find some like Snapseed where you can create really, really good edits. Snapseed is a product owned by Google, available on Android and on Apple iOS, and edit there, try some filters, try some black and white fields try some contrast. But what I wanted to show you here guys is you can create powerful compelling images by really using hardway.

Now what we've got is terrible lighting conditions overhead light is behind the subjects on backlit slightly, so you can see the same rules apply overhead light backlit background isn't great, but it's dark. So it creates some contrast around. This was a training day and this guy was pulling off some TV presenter from the crystal maze TV show. So he's wearing this false in a cap that's supposed to make him look bold, and it's all fun, it's all light, it's all jovial, and again, it's backlit. So I've got hard light and it's backlit. And so you can see just a little bit of rim around his face is separated very well from the background.

Because of his hat, but what I wanted to show you here sometimes is, even when the light isn't great, even when the background isn't great, you know, I would have preferred not to have the objects in the background. Because the red is cut a little bit, the red item is cut a little bit. I'm not composition. It's not brilliant. But I'm in a high pressure situation, I have to get the photo, and I can't be moving stuff in the background. And these people, the activities are going on, regardless of what images I get.

So it's very candid photography. So what I'm looking here, I've got the light, I can see him coming along, I can see the light is good. And then I just want to capture him walk and I want to capture that movement. I just want to capture that look. So sometimes when we're taking images, we want to capture movement we want to capture and compensate with interest in the subject. You stop worrying about whether it's perfectly composed because the guy is just so interested in you're drawn to it as what's going on here.

Why is he dressed like that? Why is he got a cap on his head? Why is he wearing leopard skin jacket? You know, why do you got a microphone? Why is he walking? Where's he going?

It creates questions. So when you're creating portraits, sometimes especially can do portraits outside, again, backlit hard light source and allow the light bouncing off of the sky or cloud behind me as a photographer, you're going to get images live, but then capture those moments capture that movement. So again, we've got some hard light and you're gonna see a theme here I'm backlight and I'm rim light, and you can see the rim around the subject. And you can see it's a very bright sunny day. Now one of the things you can do is include the light source in the image site. Very similar to how when the soft light when we included the window light here, we're including the sun, we don't too much of the sun, but just the edge of the sun.

You can see the light source and it creates a lovely rim light around the subject on his shoulder and there's enough light there bouncing off the sky to give us an exposure on his face. And it creates quite a compelling quite a strong image. The guy was obviously very comfortable in front of the camera. But you can see the light is enough it's coming around as a little bit of highlight on his nose is coming around his jaw so you can see that and that highlight that rim is pulling out and then if you have a look on the other side of the subject, so on the left side side of the subject from his perspective, the shoulder closest to the frame, you can see got a bit of room there but you got blue light reflecting back in so the light is shining, and then it's bouncing off the sky and it's shining back in and you've got another really compelling portrait but this time we've included the light source in the image.

This is a great one guys to actually go out and use as your project. Notice again, I've put him against a dark background. Why? As we've explained before, it's going to bring it highlights out if I'd stood in with the sky behind him you wouldn't have had this look you wouldn't have been able to see the highlight the highlights and the edges of him would have disappeared into The sky. Now this is another one. So from the subjects perspective, left shoulder, their left shoulder, you can see the hard sunlight coming in, you can see it in the hair.

Now what I've done here is a little trick photographers know, she's standing next to a very light colored wall. So what's happening is the lights coming over her left shoulder, there's light hitting the wall, and bouncing back and lighting her face. So again, we've got that hard light over the shoulder reflective surface in front of the subject, and what we get is a beautiful rim. And then we also get the light on the face. And then we have quite an interesting, well lit, candid family portray. This is something you're perfectly capable of go out there with family members, you know, on a sunny day, when you see a wall, bring them over, make sure the lights coming over their shoulder or is behind them.

Nick can bounce off the wall into their face and then just move them once they're there. Then it's a case of just Just getting them to just to be themselves in front of the camera. So this is a really, really handy technique, backlit small light sort of bouncing on to a large wall bouncing back into the face. I just wanted to show you this because I wanted to show you that even in really hard light, you can still take compelling images, you can see how hard is because I have the shadow is on this particular image. Obviously, sometimes you can't bounce the light, you can't bounce the light because the lights in the wrong place and you have to adapt to where they are. But this subject is walking directly into the site as a hard light source.

But now it's shining fully onto his face fully into his shirt and the black jacket gives you all that contrast and your eyes drawn to him. I would have probably liked not to have the cameraman and stuff in the background. But this was just for me was a really compelling interesting image and I've been Just use a hard light source. When you're using hard light source like this try face your subjects face directly into the light source that's going to cause them to squint when you're doing that, but if you are in a really, really tough lighting situation, and the sun's coming over your shoulder face the face into the light. So I just wanted to show you an example of how to do that. This is actually a really tough one.

So if you really want to do an extra thing for your project, maybe an extra potluck picture, try one like this. So this is London, this is a tunnel and there's some artificial lights coming down and they were purple and I really love them. So what I did was I just took the subject and put them under this light and you can see it in the hair. So it's purple. It's interesting. And then the next light I wanted to make sure I included those on the walls because I wanted that purple.

So this is an exercise in light. This is just an exercise and image taken and you're looking at the light you're observing the light and it's an interesting light purple, you know you see red or purple or yellow or green light rush over to it, place your subject under and have some fun. I just wanted to encourage you with this. So what you've got here is you've got the purple light falling down because it's a tunnel. You do have some nice light coming from one end, then have a rim the other side which you can see on our face. So now you got some really interesting lighting mixes going on but that rim on her face is compelling and then the purple coming through into the hair.

I just really love the way the light is mixed. So when you look for light, don't just look for hard light outside, look for artificial light, use it. Use the different colors go out at night with a subject get those really orange lights use them. You'd be amazed what you can do.