How to Create Ultra-Soft Portraiture Light

Soft light is great for portraiture, offering a flattering rendering of your subject's features. This great video tutorial will show you how to create ultra-soft light for portraits.

Coming to you from Daniel Norton with Adorama TV, this excellent video tutorial will show you how to create ultra-soft light for portraits. The softness of light all comes down to the size of the source relative to the subject: sources that are smaller relative to the subject will produce harder light with more contrast and faster transitions, while sources that are large relative to the subject will produce softer light with less contrast. Both types of light can be useful for portraiture, but soft light is often chosen when the photographer wants to create an image that is very flattering on the subject's features. As you will see, Norton essentially turns his entire studio into one giant source of light. Note that his studio is painted white, so be careful of color casts if yours is not. Check out the video above to see how he did it.

If you would like to continue working on your portraiture, be sure to take a look at "Perfecting the Headshot With Peter Hurley!"

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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