Working with natural light, with limited resources or in a confined space can present you with a lighting conundrum: how do you produce beautiful soft light with a minimum of equipment? A low-budget, easy-to-manipulate solution is to try bouncing light. All that’s required is a sufficiently large white surface. If this sounds too good to be true, know that bouncing light really is a very useful lighting technique to know and understand. And it’s something that you might well come back to when you’re working on a multi-million dollar project, too.<\/p>\n
Bounce lighting takes light from one source\u2013often a fairly hard one\u2013and reflects it off a large surface to create soft, diffuse light that spreads over an extensive area. While bounce lighting is a very effective means to harness and soften natural light, it doesn’t mean you can’t use it with artificial light, either. It’s particularly useful if you’re working on a budget. For example, if you’re trying to establish a reasonably priced\u00a0YouTube lighting setup<\/a>, or in quite a small space where lots of equipment could be too much of a squeeze.<\/p>\n It doesn’t matter if you’re working with natural or artificial light; the process of bouncing light remains the same. You are redirecting the light from your\u00a0key light<\/a>, which could be the sun or an LED source, over your scene using a\u00a0light modifier<\/a>. While you might want to use a specific piece of gear to accomplish this, like a reflector or a bounce board, there are plenty of other things that will work to bounce light back onto your scene.<\/p>\n Walls serve as an excellent fixture for bouncing light. By angling your light source so that it reflects back across your scene, you should be able to produce soft, diffuse light with gentle shadows. Given that you can’t move walls but can move people and gear, you might need to position your subjects or yourself and equipment to make the most of it. Do also remember that the color of the walls will impact the light it sends back. If the walls are, say, pale green, the light will have a similar green tinge.<\/p>\n Like walls, you can use ceilings to bounce light back onto a scene. Angle your key light upwards and watch the soft, bounced light fall back downwards.<\/p>\n Just as you can use a white sheet to act as a diffuser between a light source and your scene, you can also use a white piece of fabric to reflect light back onto your subjects.<\/p>\nHow to create bounce lighting<\/h2>\n
Walls and ceilings<\/h3>\n