We’ve all been in that frustrating situation.  You need to put a light stand somewhere, but there’s some physical obstruction that makes it impossible.  Sometimes it’s a wall, sometimes it’s a pillar – in my case, it was a balcony overlooking a 20 foot drop to the lobby floor.

Heather and I were on location at an Omaha, Nebraska hotel, shooting for Wedding Essentials Magazine.  We were doing a fashion editorial about Mother-of-the-Bride dresses – basically showing how mothers can still look badass.  And because of this, the lighting we discussed in pre-production was soft but contrasty and dramatic.  We were using no fill light and letting the shadows fall into blackness, and keeping the environments relatively dark and moody.

But for this particular set, there was an obstruction in the way of my lighting plan.

1)  We wanted to incorporate the architecture of the balcony.
2)  We wanted her to be able to look out over the balcony.
3)  We wanted short light on her face.

The only way to achieve this is to have the light coming from the over-the-balcony side.  But, I would have needed a 30 foot light stand to put a light there.  So, what do we do in this situation?  Have her face the other way?  Use broad light?  Sure, we could do those things.  But those all compromise our vision.  And, there was a simple, super easy way to get the light to come from the direction we wanted without a 30 foot light stand.

We used bounced light to put light where we couldn’t put a light stand.

We wanted the light to come from the angle of the ceiling to the right of the balcony, so we pointed the flash there to light it up.  When you bounce a light into a ceiling or a wall, that surface becomes the light source.  Then the light bounces back, coming from the angle that we want it to come from!

An added benefit is that by pointing a flash into the ceiling, I was able to create a soft light source.  This is because softness is based on the size of the light source relative to the subject.  When we bounce the light into the ceiling, the light has room to spread out.  Instead of looking at a 6″ flash head, we’re now seeing probably an 8 foot circle of light.  This is much larger light source, and therefore much softer.

There are some important things to keep in mind with this technique:

1)  You want to make sure that no direct light hits your subject.  In this situation, I was relying on the reflector and the angle of the light itself to direct all of the light away from Kristin and not hit her directly with any hard light.  I probably could have been more careful and put a flag in between Kristin and the light, or wrapped the light in black wrap.  With flags to block light, you could even point the light toward the subject more and throw light over her shoulder, to create even shorter short light.

2)  Remember that when you’re bouncing light, the ceiling or wall becomes the light source.  So, when you’re thinking about the direction of light that you want to use, imagine where you would place a light source if you weren’t bouncing the light, and bounce the light into that spot of the ceiling.

3)  You can use this technique with any kind of light!  It doesn’t have to be a flash.  Though you need very powerful constant lights to get the same kind of distance and power that you can with a flash.

Now time for a thought experiment:

What would happen if we moved the light further away from the ceiling?

It would give the light more room to spread, and would make it softer on the subject.  It would also require more power to reach the same exposure — which means turning the flash up, or adjusting camera settings (opening the aperture or turning up the ISO).

By keeping the light relatively close to the ceiling itself, we can control how soft the light is.  Since other shots in this editorial were light by a 60″ octabox, keeping the circle of light on the ceiling relatively small meant that the light would match more closely to the rest of the editorial.  We could have made the light softer, but it could start to look more like a large window, rather than a relatively punchy octabox.  This distance gives us a blend between softness and punchiness that keeps the drama level right where we wanted it.

Have you ever used bounced light to solve a problem?  Share your examples in the comments!