In this three part article I’m going to offer some reasons why one might want to use hard light instead of soft light or visa versa in their photographs. Round one: Hard Light

Let The Why To Battle Begin!

Folks far more skilled than I can tell you in great detail the science and techniques of hard and soft light. Light, Science, Magic is probably the best way to find out. Strobist.com ain’t too shabby neither. But just so we all start off on the same page I’ll define Hard Light as a quality of light on an object where the fall off from the highlighted side of the object to the shadowed side happens over a very short distance. This creates the look of a sharp or hard edge, hence, hard light. Soft Light has a much more gentle transition from the highlighted side to the shadowed side creating a soft edge.

I recommend you become very familiar with the techniques if you aren’t already. However, if you’d like to just cheat and jump to the front of the line: Hard Light = relative small light source. Soft Light = relative large light source. If that doesn’t make sense (or leaves out some really important stuff), well, you shouldn’t have tried to cheat, now should you?

Right, now the good bits: Bring on the Why! Tell me, Mr. Nice, why on Earth would I ever want to use hard light?

• Copy Cat – There are many hard light sources found in “nature.” The sun on a cloudless day, for instance, candle light, etc. If you want to imply in your image that your subject is about to get run over by the midnight train, probably not a good idea to through your light at him through a six foot Octabox.
• The I’s Have It – If you’ve been reading Nice for any length of time, you may have noticed that the Idea behind an image is pretty important to me. Well, some ideas are easier to communicate with hard light than soft. Like subtext in your image? You can imply strength, slickness, or dishonesty, among other ideas in your portrait just by using hard light instead of soft… if you do it right.
• Don’t Cry Over Spilled Light – Not looking forward to cleaning up all that over flowed light? Go hard. Little draws a viewers attention to an object in an image more than pinpoint (or snoot) lighting. Thanks to science, you can’t have soft light that is also snooted. Go ahead and argue me in the comments. I can take it!
• True Grit – Shooting a leather faced boxing champ from the 1930′s? Want your audience to feel the sting of every dame who ever broke his heart, every dream that died with a knock out punch? Use a hard light and every crack and scar on his face will scream give this photog a Pulitzer.
• The Shadow Knows – Want one of those crisp shadowy silhouettes on the wall like this still from Nosferatu? You gotta use hard light. Shadows from soft light have, you guessed it, a soft edge.
• Surrender - My least favorite reason to bring Hard Light to the party? Some times environment and physics, the bastard twins of nature conspire to leave a photographer no other choice. If your strobe doesn’t have enough juice to pass through a softbox or bounce off a large reflector and still over power the ambient light despite you maxing out the sync speed on your shutter, well, you’ve got to swallow that jagged little pill and shoot it hard.

Some folks are on a never ending quest to get softer and softer light, but if you only shoot soft light you’re only using one third of your vocabulary. Now come up with an idea that needs hard light to make it right and then pop your photo in the Nicephotomag flickr pool with the tag “Hard Light” if you please.

In round two we’ll focus in on Soft Light.

Round three – The combination punch!

Nice!

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