In photography, hard light is one that causes an abrupt transition between shadows and lights. It is characterized by creating very pronounced dark shadows and with a lot of contrast between black and white.
Obtaining hard light will depend on different aspects such as intensity, directionality or the size of the source.

  • Directionality. Depending on the orientation or direction of the light, the texture, volume and intensity of the tones will depend. Within the directionality we can find five types.
    1. Frontal. It is the one that will differentiate the details and reduce the textures.
    2. Zenithal. It will form sharp shadows.
    3. Side. It will highlight the textures and expand the volume.
    4. Upside down.It will cast unnatural shadows.
    5. Rear. It will play with backlights, contrasts or contours.
  • Light source size. To get hard light we will have to make use of small lighting sources. The smaller the source of illumination, the greater the hardness of light we will obtain.
  • Distance. The fact that the light source is closer or further away will also influence the hardness of the light. The closer the light source is, the less scattered and the harder it will be.

Hard light is used to create “dramatic” type sensations. It is more connected with the feeling of mystery, strength, aggressiveness … It is ideal to stimulate these types of emotions or to increase similar aspects that the scene or the protagonist of it has.

Something supposedly as easy as altering the orientation of the light, the intensity or the temperature is decisive to achieve a good result. Thanks to these types of variations, an image can be drastically converted, providing it with another meaning totally different from the original.

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