Bounce Lighting

Bounce lighting is a photographic technique in which light from a flash, lamp or the sun is aimed at a reflective surface such as a ceiling, wall, board or reflector, lighting the subject only indirectly. The reflecting surface becomes the effective light source, and its greater size produces softer, more open shadows. Reflectors that redirected daylight onto sitters were already part of the earliest daguerreotype studios, and Hollywood portrait photographers of the 1930s and 1940s, among them Clarence Sinclair Bull, often lit stars with lamps bounced off large painted boards. The method spread widely with portable flash in the mid-twentieth century, and the 1957 edition of Kodak's manual How to Make Good Pictures illustrated bounce flash as a remedy for harsh frontal flash.

In practice, the position of the surface sets the direction of the light. A ceiling bounce gives broad top light that can leave eye sockets in shadow, a wall to one side produces side light that models form, and a wall behind the camera yields the flattest, almost shadowless result. On-camera flash heads are tilted and swiveled, often with a small bounce card sending some light forward for catchlights, while studio photographers use umbrellas, white foam-core sheets and large boards as dedicated bounce surfaces. Because the light travels farther and is partly absorbed, bounced exposures need more power, traditionally about two extra stops with manual flash. The surface also tints the light, so colored walls produce color casts, and glass or polished metal can create hot spots. High, dark or open spaces return too little light.

Bounce lighting is most often defined against Direct Flash. Unlike the frontal, hard-edged illumination of a flash aimed at the subject, a well-bounced flash leaves few traces of its source. Bounce lighting overlaps with Studio Lighting where umbrellas and boards are used, but differs from diffusion through softboxes or scrims, in which light passes through a translucent material.