I’ve talked a lot about the importance of shaping light. I figured, why not have a resource on my site that I could easily point people to that has my thoughts on ways of shaping lights and also including some of the best videos I’ve seen on each. This post can save tons of time scouring the internet for good content. I recommend that you actually subscribe to all the creators videos because they put out insight videos all the time. So let’s start with the most common way of shaping light, the bounce.
Bouncing Light
Bouncing light is simple. To achieve this, all you have to do is bounce light off of any surface or material unto your subject. You could bounce off of a wall, the ceiling, a reflector, a bounce card, a white sheet… the options or endless. One thing to remember is that you are essentially transferring the light source. Your actual light isn’t really considered the light source one you bounce it from, the place or material you bounce the light from is your light source. Some people use the term skip bounce which is basically just bouncing the light from below, like off of the floor.
Flagging Light
When flagging light, you are basically blocking the light source from hitting the desired area with the use of a flag. Most commonly, black flags are made from duvetyne. You can also do things like black sheets or cardboard. Different materials yield different results. A cucoloris, or cookies, flags some of the light but lets light leak from the shapes that are carved out.
Negative Fill
When a DP wants negative fill, they are referring to taking away light. To achieve this, you can bring in a black flag closer to a subject and the flag absorbs a lot of the surrounding light. Credibly leverage other’s frictionless internal or “organic” sources rather than high-payoff total linkage.
Control light using black wrap or skirting the light
So by adding modifiers onto the actual light, you can get more control. Sometimes when you strike a light, you’ll have light leaking from the back of the light and that may affect your scene. That’s when adding black wrap to that light could fix that problem. Or if that pesky china ball is just throwing light everywhere, i’m talking soft light 360 degrees which is kind of it’s purpose, you can add a skirt to the china ball to control your light.
