Bouncing Light

    If you need a small adjustment to light bounce it! The idea of bouncing light is very simple, but extremely effective! The idea is to shine your light not directly at the object of interest, but bounce it off and object towards it. It softens the lighting and gives it a more natural look.
    What you bounce your light off can also affect your scene. Bouncing light off a wall can give the look that light is entering the room from a window. To get better control over your light you can use a reflector to get the angle you desire. For documentaries you want to keep your scene looking as natural as possible, so bouncing the light off of the ceiling really gives a real natural look to your scene, but be careful as lights are hot and can easily set off sprinklers or burn a ceiling.
    This article is super cool! I didn't know you had to use lights directly! It is really cool that you can use walls to dilute the light in your scene. Next year in video I am definitely going to do this when recording scenes, I have never really liked cast shadows because they throw too much information at me for some scenes, but the act of bouncing and diluting really opens up a lot of possibility as to the mood you can create.