Digital Boudoir Photography : A Step-by-step Guide to ... - Ken Gilbert

98 Digital Boudoir Photography
Direct Flash On-Camera
Flash with Diffuser
Using Flash
It is important to have good quality light to make sensual boudoir portraits.
The light generally needs to be balanced and not too harsh. One
way to do that is by using an on-camera flash, even outdoors. If you are
using a compact point-and-shoot camera, you may not be able to add on a
separate flash. You may be limited to using the flash you have built-in.
This will not give you as much power or control and it is difficult to add
on modifiers to soften the harsh light of the tiny flash.
The key to the softness of the light has to do with what is called “apparent
size.” Sunlight is very harsh. Even though the sun is huge, the “apparent
size” of the sun is quite small in comparison to a person. It looks like a
very small point source light. That is what makes the light harsh. Instead,
if you have a large softbox, dome, or even an overcast day, the light will
appear to be much softer. Soft light is when the edges of the shadows have
a large transition between very dark and the lighter area beyond the
shadow. Harsh, or “hard light,” has a very sharp shadow line.
Using Linda as our model, we tried five different lighting combinations.
We had direct flash, flash with the small flat diffuser on the flash pulled
down, flash with a small dome, flash with a larger dome (called the
Portrait Dome), and finally a kind of clear diffuser which points upward,
bouncing the light around, known as a Lightsphere Photojournalist, or PJ.
See the figures for samples of what they look like.
Flash with Small Dome Flash with Large Dome Flash with Photojournalist