17. THE THREE DEGREES OF DIFFUSION
LIGHT QUALITY DESCRIBES the hardness or softness of the light. Most practically, the quality of the light refers to how hard the transition from light to shadow is on your portrait subject. Like many things in photography, the quality of light exists on a ranging continuum from very hard, where the shadows are blocky and sharp, to so soft that the shadows do not appear at all. Luckily, we have three general terms that describe points of light quality. We refer to these as the three degrees of diffusion.
Direct light, the first degree of light quality, is unimpeded light from the sun. This type of light is usually ...
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