Light — Science & Magic, 6th Edition

REVEALING SHAPE AND CONTOUR 83

Distance from the Subject

You may have been surprised that in the preceding section we referred to

the clouds and the sky as larger light sources than the sun. A corollary to the

eect of the size of the light relates to the distance between a light and the

subject it illuminates.

e closer a light is to the subject, the soer the shadows are; the farther

a light is from the subject, the harder the shadows become. e sun behaves

as a small light source to people on Earth because it is so far away.

Remember that large lights produce so shadows because they illumi-

nate the subject from more dierent directions. Figure 5.7 (overleaf) shows

this, but look at what happens in Figure 5.8 (overleaf) when we mo ...