sk66
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Due to an assignment I'm mentoring/critiquing I've been paying a lot more attention to shadows in general (shadows are the theme). And it seems to me that cloudy skies do NOT make shadows softer. Yesterday was a particularly good day to observe this as we had a low cloud layer which should be better than a high layer. It wasn't too thick and it was somewhat inconsistent. So I could watch a shadow as it was being cast from direct sun thru all of the transitions to no shadow at all.
In my observations the only thing clouds really do is make shadows less dense/dark and they have little/no effect on "softness." In essence, they really only create "flat" light when all shadows are gone.
There *is* a very brief moment where the shadows do seem to become notably softer, but I believe it is due to reflected light coming from surrounding surfaces and not because of the clouds themselves. This particular balance of sunlight diffused by clouds and reflected light is actually a very hard thing to find...especially with any consistency to it. A much more significant factor in softness seems to be how far the shadow has to travel.
So, am I nuts? Or is the "clouds produce soft light" really a misnomer/confusion of density -vs- softness characteristics?
In my observations the only thing clouds really do is make shadows less dense/dark and they have little/no effect on "softness." In essence, they really only create "flat" light when all shadows are gone.
There *is* a very brief moment where the shadows do seem to become notably softer, but I believe it is due to reflected light coming from surrounding surfaces and not because of the clouds themselves. This particular balance of sunlight diffused by clouds and reflected light is actually a very hard thing to find...especially with any consistency to it. A much more significant factor in softness seems to be how far the shadow has to travel.
So, am I nuts? Or is the "clouds produce soft light" really a misnomer/confusion of density -vs- softness characteristics?