So the first place to start is being able to see the difference between hard light and soft light. And it is really, really simple. So this is hard light. And Hard Light is easy to identify because it creates a hard shadow. This is something we need to understand when we're looking at light, we need to be able to see the difference between hard light and soft light. So for instance, we've got a light source, which I'm going to show you using the virtual studio in a moment.

We've got a light source shining on this side of the face, and it's creating a very hard line in the shadow area. So it goes from high exposure to very low exposure. It goes from light to dark very, very quickly. So that means we know we've got hardline. So let's have a look at that in the virtual students see what's causing that So here we are in the virtual studio, and we see our subjects just in a plain room, we've got a camera. And then we've got a light source over here, which is small.

And when a light source is small, like this, it creates hard shadows, it creates what we would call Hard Light. So now we're shooting with hard light. Now, when you begin to understand this, when people think about the sun, if you ask them is the sun, a big light source or a small light source, they often say it's a big light source because they think the sun is big, but actually, when you look at the sun in the sky is actually quite small. So it's a small light source and the sun is going to give you very hard light. Now a lot of photographers are very frightened of hard light. And we're going to just encourage you in this course not to be frightened of heartline we're going to show you how to use and how to adapt to it.

But this is what hardlight looks like. So let's just have a look at soft light. Now the complete opposite now be aware that between hard and soft, there's a big spectrum if you learn the two, you'll figure out the bits in between. So we don't really need to worry too much. Usually the light is either very hard, or it's very soft. So let's have a look at a soft light source.

And as you can see now there's hardly any shadow because the light is wrapping around and we'll show you why that is in a moment. And if there is a shadow, it's very soft, it blends so if you see the shadow under here, it's actually blending it's not hardline it'll blend so that tells us a soft shadow. A great way to figure out is when you're out and about in the street is you can do this anytime. Look at the cars. Look whether the lights coming from look at a car, look at its shadow. If it's hard, like I love a really strong shadow If it's soft, like I have hardly any shadow.

So let's have a look at this in the virtual studio. So what I've done here, turn it around so you can see is I've essentially set two big lights. So these are like two big light sources. Now, if you're outside the sun would be behind a cloud, you would have a big light source bigger than this. And what would happen is, the light would wrap around the subjects face, zoom in a bit, the light would wrap around the subjects face so the bigger the light source, the softer the light is. Now this is rendering a slight shadow here and I don't think the software actually renders shadows from soft light sources that well because normally you would find that these shadows would be non existent in real life so ignore the shadows for now.

But what I want you to see is that these soft light is soft light, just removed Shadow and you'll understand it more as we go through some of the images when I start pointing out how to look at an image and figure out where the light is coming from, and what type of light it is. In summary, we can either have a large light source which creates soft light, or we can have a small light source, which creates Hard Light. And that is the basic understanding, you need to start taking interesting images. Now what happens is this large light is soft, and it softens the features of a subject Hard Light is hard, and we'll bring out the details in the features of our subject. So if we just think about that a little bit, if we're taking a picture of a lady, she doesn't want her features to be full of detail, she wants smooth young skin, so we would use soft light, whereas a man might prefer a rugged look and he doesn't want to look soft, you might want to look a bit more rugged when you use hardline but hopefully from there You can see the difference between soft light and hard light just from watching what the shadows look like.