Creating Soft Light In Small Spaces: The Breakdown with Miguel Quiles

In this video, photographyer Miguel Quiles demonstrates techniques that can help you create soft light in a small studio environment. How does he do it? Pretty simple – he bounces his soft box off of a large V-flat resulting in very soft light on his subject. Keep in mind that the dynamics of a small space work well for creating soft light because there are so many nearby surfaces for light to bounce off of, assuming that the walls are light colored (and hopefully neutral colored so as not to impart a color cast).

However, if your goal is to create a portrait with lots of contrast, shooting in a small studio space can be very problematic. Because of the nearby surfaces, limiting the amount of spill light that lands on your subject can be difficult. In those cases, gridded modifiers, black flags and black-out fabric may be needed to achieve the desired high contrast resuls. [Sean]