Photography: Using White Cards

Video Transcript

"In this segment I'm going to show you how to use a white card as a light modifier. The most important thing to do in when you're setting up one of these, is just to bounce the light into the white card, simple. I have been using this white card in particular, for about ten years. They are very, very durable. They can take a lot of stuff. This thing has got wet, ripped up, broken, shoved everywhere. And it still works great. All it matters, it's still got a descent, relatively clean white surface. The look is very similar to a Soft box. You can move it around and adjust it. It's kind of like the one general kind of idea with most of these modifiers is- The larger it is, the softer it is going to be. This is actually just a medium size white card. When I use the big ones. The 4x8 sheets of white sheets of foam core. Specially, if I take them together, you get great, very diffused soft light. And they work really nice. And this is actually a good place to start when you want to start playing with modifying your light. You can actually use another white card to bounce light back in. As you can see that it evens out the light, quite a bit. You can angle it a little bit, if you want it get it in there. Just a little bit more. And the closer you get it, the more light that it fills in. And as you can see it, it really helps fill in the shadows on the nose there. As you can see, it makes quite a difference. If you want something a little bit different, you can warm it up by using a gold card. You can see, it creates quite a difference. Or even a silver card, if you want to be very specular. And just creates a nice warm shadow right there."