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Great insights on reflected light! I never realized how much it could enhance portraits. The tips about using natural reflectors are especially helpful. Can’t wait to experiment with my next shoot!

This is why photographing on green grass in midday sun results in sickly looking skin tones that you then need to color correct in post. The light comes down from above, hits the grass and bounces green light straight back up into the subject.

When you bounce light off a large surface close to the subject, you make the light source bigger, so the light is softer. And soft light is flattering on skin.

The easiest way to explain the difference between specular reflection and diffused reflection is to show you with a diagram.

Reflected light is often also called bounced light, especially when created with flash, which is why we also talk about bouncing light back into shot.

Also, I love good news, so if my photography lighting tips have helped you to understand what is reflected light, share that too.

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Light coming from beneath a person is unflattering, unless it’s used as a fill light just to fill in and soften shadows beneath the chin, under the nose and under the eyes in a clamshell lighting set up.

Of course you can’t rely on a handy white painted brick wall being nearby every time you take a photo, so how do you create reflected light anywhere, any time?

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The wall added a second light source, so I was backlit by the sun and front lit by the reflected light. When you can add a light source to a photo it makes the image more interesting and elevates it above a snapshot.

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In other words it’s light (any type of light, natural or artificial) that doesn’t shine directly onto the subject. It’s first shone onto a surface and then reflected back to the subject.

Lastly, the large surface area of the wall changed the light source into a large light source. In photography the larger the light source relative to the subject, the softer the light will be.

Diffused reflection occurs when a ray of light strikes a rough surface and is then scattered away at different angles, because of the different angles of the rough surface.

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The Art of Innovation™ is Impact Lighting's motto and we pride ourselves on delivering innovative, artistic, and impactful projects since 2005. We offer a wide range of custom fabrication services for both fiber optic and LED lighting projects.

The quick explanation to what is reflected light in photography is any light that hits a reflective surface and is reflected back onto the subject in a photo. Some surfaces are more reflective than others and some are the wrong color, so the type of surface used to reflect light is very important and we’ll get into that in a moment.

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Reflected light takes on the color cast of the surface used to reflect it. So, when you bounce light off of a green surface (like in the image above), you’ll cast a green light onto your subject.

Another bonus was that it was a white surface, so white light was reflected back at me, with no color cast to mess with my skin tones.

Hi! I'm Jane Allan, professional portrait photographer and founder of The Lens Lounge - photography tutorials and online courses. Here to help you create the photos you dream of by sharing everything I've learned.

If I didn’t have the wall reflecting light back at me my face would have been dark and the background super blown out. So the reflected light worked as fill light to brighten my face.

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I’d simply stood facing a white painted brick wall with the sun shining from behind me onto the wall. So my skin was smoothed out by the super soft, diffused light reflecting back at me. I can’t think of a better reason to use reflected light!

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Before we get into the details of using reflected light in photography, you should know that there are two ways to light a subject:

A while ago I updated my Facebook profile photo and my friends went mad commenting that I looked so young and couldn’t believe we were the same age. There was no magic involved, I haven’t had any “work done” and I didn’t edit my skin to look like plastic.