We photographers are always trying to soften up the light. Bounce it off a ceiling or a wall, put an umbrella or a big softbox on our lights. Most of us, at one time or another, have resorted to having all manner of white plastic tupperware  type devices hanging off our on-camera flashes making us look all kinds of foolish and prompting “what the heck is that thing on your camera” type conversations. This all in the name of creating soft light that wraps around absolutely everything. But judiciously used, hard light can also be cool. I picked up this little “go to” portrait technique from David Hobby who has made a career out of using small flash in creative ways and subsequently blogging about his assignments.

For both of these photos, I used a Honl snoot, which shapes the light into a small spotlight. The flash is off the camera on a light stand and up a bit high. I just basically follow David’s method of dropping my ambient exposure a bit and popping the subject’s face back up a bit with the hard light. I didn’t do any dodging, burning or vignetting in Photoshop, just some very subtle skin retouching and a little midtone boost in her eyes.

Hard light is not for everyone (it brings out quite a bit of skin detail) But a young female model or male subject can take the “punch”  of some hard light. Using a light colored wall will give you some bounce back toward your subject and soften the effect a bit.

Thanks for looking!