Light Quality

Hard light blasts its way across the landscape, zapping subjects with brilliant highlights and creating jet-black shadow areas. Soft light awakens worlds of subtle hue and gradation and provides a gentle but pleasant modeling in both landscapes and portraits. Because you can't alter the quality of light (other than by waiting for it to change), the key is to match it to a compatible subject: hard light to accent the graphic lines of an industrial landscape, or soft light for a group portrait.