The Four Fundamental Attributes of Light

Being a successful photographer or videographer requires a good understanding of the fundamentals, with perhaps nothing more foundational than the behavior of light. This excellent video will show you four fundamental aspects of light that you should definitely know.

Coming to you Videomaker, this great video will show you four fundamental aspects of light, their properties, and how you can manipulate them to your advantage. One thing to note is that when the video mentions that hard light originates from small sources and soft light from large sources, this refers to the size of the light source relative to the subject, not its absolute size. This is why despite the fact that the sun is enormous compared to any sort of earthly light source, it produces very hard light, simply because it is about 93,000,000 million miles away. In turn, this is why you can change the hardness or softness of your light source by simply moving it — that is, changing its size relative to your subject. Moving it closer to your subject will produce softer light and moving it farther will produce harder light. Check out the video above for lots of other helpful tips.

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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2 Comments

The information was useful and would be even more useful if video examples were included in the presentation.

Absolutely! It would help with the dryness of the presentation as well.