Todays lesson is Diffusing Light, cheaply and effectively.

I will be copy/pasting from my deviations as to make this a bit quicker for me.

Sometimes you can't help that the sun is out in full force and harsh light is a nemesis. Well I decided I was not going to be bested
by the harsh light. I, like many of you are on strict budgets and are forced to come up with creative ways do make
our images. Yesterday while I was in the process of waking up, I thought hey I should make a light diffuser. I hate having to block
the sun out completely, you can loose up to 3 stops of light doing that, then you get forced into bumping up your ISO to compensate
So I went out to the garage, found some small pieces of wood (left over from renovating last year) had hubby cut the pieces into four 1 foot lengths.
well I came into a few problems joining the pieces together. The wood was so hard (get your filthy minds out of the gutter...yeah I'm talking to YOU!!)
I couldn't get staples from my staple gun to work, nails didn't work...so I said screw it, JB WELD!!! Macguyver(sp) eat your heart out!
JB weld worked AWESOMELY for joining the pieces. Then I cut up an old white shirt and stapled that to the now wood frame. You can see in the pic
that the staples just wouldn't go all the way through, but just enough to hold the cloth.
The outer frame measures exactly 1 foot x 1 foot. The inner measures nearly 9 inches by 9 inches.
The white cloth diffuses the harsh light really well, and you lose maybe 1 stop of light as opposed to shading your subject completely and losing too much.

It's small enough to carry around, very light weight and sturdy (thank you JB Weld)





Now here are examples of what diffusing light does and the wonderful results it produces.
Crocus shot without using Diffuser


Crocus shot using Diffuser



what a difference the diffuser makes!
Without the diffuser, as you can see, there are blown out highlights and shadows. Using it evens out the light nicely leaving even exposure between shadow and highlight areas .


If none of this made any damn sense...uhm...I blame Darth Vader