Changing the Sun With A Piece of Nylon

For portraits taken outdoors a very handy tool is a large, translucent panel often called a silk. My friend John often uses a silk in film and video work to soften harsh, direct sunlight and make soft, more pleasing lighting on the subject. A silk is basically a big sheet of nylon stretched onto a frame of some kind. Photo/film/video gear is usually expens(overpriced)ive but I recently learned on the Internet that one can be home-made for a fraction of the price. My first task was to locate the appropriate fabric, rip-stop nylon. DONE! Next I need to build a frame, probably from PVC tubes and figure out how I want to attach the fabric. Since I can't wait, because I have little to zero patience, I did some test shots by just hanging my nylon sheet to one of the beams over my back patio so that one side was hit by full sun.


Using my self as the reluctant "model", here are 3 examples: a. Direct sun. Notice how uncomfortable the subject is. b. Sun is shining through the silk. Hard to believe it's the same person! c. The silk can also be used to bounce (reflect) the sun back onto the subject so shadows aren't so harsh or, as in this example, to fill in some nice light when the subject is backlit. Gah...I need to get someone else to pose for my experiments! But this hopefully gets the idea across.