If something is hard, how do we soften it?

If it’s a sponge, add some water. If it’s a metal, melt it. If it’s a cookie, dip it in a glass of milk. But what about light? You can’t add water to it. Heck, how do you plan to melt light? And no, don’t even think about buying milk, even it’s a free one like here.

Fortunately, photographers are not as stupid unintelligent as you think they are. Somehow, we have come with a creative way of softening, or shall we say, diffusing the light.

Take a look at this picture.

As you can see, this is a bad case of harsh light created by using direct flash on her face. This kind of action made the picture looked very unnatural, even with a natural beauty like her in the picture (this is another friend of mine. I have plenty of beautiful friends you know . Oh, sorry, this one already have a boyfriend )

Now look at this photo.

Prettier, eh? How did I do this?

Simple. I put a folded tissue in front of the flash. No, really, I put a tissue in front of the flash. It might sounds funny, but the result are sure ain’t funny, right? The tissue acted as a ’spreader’, spreading the burst of light from the flash into a wider area, resulting in better distribution of light throughout the picture.

It’s like you throw a pie at your friend . If you throw it at just one guy, he’ll get the most portion of it right smack in his face (and you better run for your life). If you throw it hard enough onto a table where your friends are standing nearby, the table will act as a diffuser, and all of your friends will get their share of the pie (and you better run faster than a New York cab driver). Get the idea?