Today’s post is for Project 52, a weekly blog project that I am working on with several other talented photographers whom I’ve come to know and love over the past year. In this project, we concentrate on light and spend several weeks exploring an overarching theme. This month we will be exploring diffuse light.  Diffuse or soft light is the opposite of hard light, which we worked on last November.  Where hard light was small compared to the subject, resulting in dark shadows, soft light is large compared to the subject and results in subtle to no shadows.  Overcast days, open shade, or the sky (as opposed to the sun itself) are examples of diffuse light sources.  Soft light is often the easiest light to use, because it lights your subject rather evenly, but it can sometimes be a little bit boring, a little bit safe.

Seattle often has overcast gray days, so I am very, very familiar with diffuse light.  Just in time for our new theme, however, the grays skies vanished and we have been blessed with blue skies and sunny days.  Let me be very clear – I am NOT complaining one bit!  But this meant that I turned indoors to find my diffuse light, relying on my windows to soften the light, so that instead of harsh shadows across Alexa’s face there are subtle ones to give her face some dimension.  Ok, enough of my blathering – isn’t she a cutie?

Cheese!!!

Please continue along in our creative blog circle to see the stunning work of Sarah Roemer Davis.  Sarah lives in Manhattan with her husband and son, and another little one on the way.  Click HERE to see Sarah’s creative play on diffuse light.