If you move your hand over to a wall that is reflecting that sunlight or reflecting that pinpoint light source, you will notice how the harsh shadows smooth out, revealing more shadow detail and less texture. The reflected light source just became larger, and it now wraps the light around your hand, filling the shadows and softening the texture. The light is reflecting from many angles, and that allows it to wrap around the subject. This lighting would be good if you were to simulate an overcast desert scene showing the rocks and sand with softer shadows. You could still have the light coming from a lower angle, but the light would still wrap around the sand and rocks and the shadows would have some details.

Well, you can't get much farther away than the sun... and, if you think about it, the sun is really, really big. So what gives? You have the largest light source around and still pretty harsh shadows. That's because it is so far away, and that makes it a really small light source.

You can't move any closer to the sun, but you can move closer to any artificial light source you might have created. OK, so just move closer to your hot lights... yeah... that's how you nearly set everything ablaze!

Rules three and four might still not mean much to you, but we'll soon learn how to use them in a real-life situation. When you moved your hand close to the wall that was reflecting your pinpoint light source, what you did was create a larger light source that came from many angles and that allowed the light to wrap around your hand. You can manipulate the size of the light source by moving closer to your light source or modifying it. We already know what happens if we try to move closer to the sun, and the hot lights for that matter, but what happens if we try to modify that light, to make it appear larger?

We already tried reflecting it, and the results were pretty good. But how about diffusing it? If you think about it, the wall was simply diffusing the light source, wasn't it? The atrium I mentioned earlier was a big diffuser, with the light from the sun and the sky reflecting all over the place, creating wonderful soft light with beautiful qualities that revealed deep color and soft, appealing details. So, what's the best way to diffuse your light? With a diffuser, of course! But a pro wouldn't call it a "diffuser"... you'd just embarrass yourself. You would call it a scrim, and you can find them just about anywhere you look. The skylight at the top of the atrium may have been fashioned from a diffusing material. The drapes on your windows have diffusing qualities, and the opaque glass in your powder room is a diffuser. They are all incredible sources of inspiration, but not practical scrims to carry around.

There are several types of scrims, but we are only going to talk about simple fabric ones. There are three basic styles: umbrellas, softboxes and flat scrims. They all accomplish the same task and differ mainly by how they are assembled and the "reflection" they produce. The advantage of umbrellas is their setup speed, ease of transport and cost. They are excellent for fast shooting where lighting must be compromised due to budget or time restraints. The reflections produced by umbrellas are difficult to manage and frequently show the "bones" inside, which usually isn't good for products. Softboxes are a bit slower to set up and require more room, but they offer better lighting control and better reflections than umbrellas. Scrims are slow to set up, require the most equipment and require more floor space than either umbrellas or softboxes, but they offer the most lighting control. You can set up umbrellas or soft boxes with only one light stand, whereas one scrim requires three stands: one for the light and two for the scrim.