Stop Guessing What Your Light Is Doing.

Use a simple white golf ball to learn the visual logic that separates flat snapshots from three dimensional, high-quality lighting. Once you can read the shadow, you will never guess your light again.

This project is all about understanding how light behaves - specifically how it affects shadows, highlights and brightness. Using a simple subject like a golf ball, you'll explore how small changes in lighting can completely transform an image.

This project focuses on:

  • The inverse square law (how light falls off over distance)
  • Shadow sharpness and density
  • Gloss highlights and reflections
  • The difference between hard and soft light

What you need:

  • White golf ball
  • White tee
  • White surface
  • Any Camera
  • Light (even a desk lamp will do!)

But don't worry if you don't have all of that - any glossy ball and a light surface (even paper) will work. If you want to push it further, try balancing the ball on a tee for a more challenging shot, and to really see the shadows at play!

Example project image

What to upload to the gallery:

  • Shoot from above with a hard light to create strong, defined shadows
  • Switch to a soft light and see how those shadows change
  • Move your light closer and further away to observe how brightness and falloff behave (this is the inverse square law in action)
  • Pay attention to how the highlight moves across the ball and how it defines the shape
  • We especially want to see demonstration of shadow density changing (you can combine 2 results into one photo side by side if you wish)

By the end, you should have a better feel for how to shape light and shadow, how distance affects exposure, how reflective surfaces behave and how small changes can completely transform the shot.

The Badges you could earn:

Project Badge
Project Badge
Project Badge
Project Badge
Project Badge
Project Badge
Project Badge
Project Badge
Project Badge

Upload your setup or early tests (no perfect shots needed!) Please don't wait until you have a polished image to participate. This project is about learning to see the light, so your rough behind-the-scenes setups or quick phone snaps are incredibly valuable. Upload whatever you have tried so far, claim your badge, and I’ll look at these real-world examples in our project talks.

See you in the gallery,
Karl Taylor

Project Gallery

Comments

  1. Unfortunately my Apple Laptop decided it was time to play up and it was near the end of its useful life, so I was unable to make any changes prior to the end date.

    Glad to see I still managed to get the badges, even though I had not labled the images with my surname, so thanks for that guys.

  2. Hey Karl
    I submitted a request for Project 2 on May 19, 2026, and unfortunately haven’t received a response yet.
    You briefly commented on all new membership requests.
    I don’t know if you didn’t have time to reply or if the request violates the guidelines. That’s a shame.
    I wish you and your team a pleasant day.

    Regards, Eddie

  3. ScottKam

    This was a good project. I didn’t really know I could get these kind of lighting effects using unmodified strobes. Looking forward to the egg project now.

    1. Great to hear thanks. You will love the fried egg project – the best result I got on that one was actually with Speedlites.

  4. Lewis Baillie

    Hi Karl, I hope you and the team are well. I found this task quite difficult in my small studio space with studio lights, as I couldn’t move the lights by a significant distance and was struggling with bare bulb/hard light exposure hotspots when close, limiting overall exposure. Is there anything that can be done in much smaller spaces to get the same level of control that a larger space gives you? I remember someone mentioning a projection system to increase shadow density, and I was wondering if there was anything else that I could use. Many thanks

    1. Hi, what sort of size space are you working in and do you have white surrounding walls and ceiling? Also what height is your white ceiling?

      1. Lewis Baillie

        Many thanks for your reply.

        It’s a converted loft, so the ceiling is standard height in the middle and cascades off either side after about 1m. All a light cream colour.

        I can shoot perpendicular rather than parallel to the ceiling to add around 1.5m in height and up to 2.5m distance from the subject. In total, it’s a roughly 4x3m space, it’s just that the ceiling is limiting and the colour bounces light significantly.

        I have a much larger space on my doorstep that I can hire for projects that require it, but it would be good to know of ways to manage this issue for projects that’s don’t have the budget for that.

        Thanks again!

        1. Hi, based on your description if this space is all white walls, ceiling etc then it means that bare bulb lighting pointed away from the subject is going to give very effective global illumination (virtually shadowless as long as the subject can’t see the bare bulb) however it will make it quite difficult for you to control direct lighting on to the subject because you don’t have a great deal of distance which means it is harder to control a rapid light fall off due to the inverse square law. Although you can mitigate this somewhat with reflector cards and using the global illumination bounced around your space. A projection attachement or any modifier that collimates light such as a fresnel or parabolic reflector will help reduce the effect of the inverse square law fall off to a point. It’s never easy working in small spaces, one of my first jobs in photography as an assistant to a product photographer was in a very small studio and he had painted the whole thing matt black so there was no illumination from anything other than his small scrims and softboxes and reflector cards as he was photographing a lot of highly reflective items like jewellery. With all aspects of lighting and space you just have to work the physics, if the physics doesn’t work then it will never work and you have fix the physics which is sometimes the space itself. You might find this new class useful as I deliberately work in a smaller space to show what’s possible: https://visualeducation.com/class/fundamentals-product-lighting/

          1. Lewis Baillie

            Thanks so much for the detail of your response! I’ll be sure to check out that class. Looking forward to the livestream this afternoon. See you then!

  5. Matteo Rolfi

    I started with you, Karl, during COVID, and my very first video was the Egg Challenge. It was the most useful video I had ever seen at the time.

    Today, I’m shooting national campaigns for brands like McDonald’s, Heineken, Nestlé, and others. Despite that, I still find this kind of video incredibly useful. It really refreshes your skills.

    If anyone is reading this comment, go watch the Egg Challenge too!!!

    1. Love it and thank you that’s great to hear. For anyone wondering what we’re talking about here it’s this class from some years ago: https://visualeducation.com/class/learn-how-to-control-studio-light-the-egg-challenge/ however we have a brand new Egg Challenge (A fried egg this time) in the form of our Project 3 Challenge which launches on the 11th of June and is about creating this shot: https://karltaylor.com/?itemId=1jx7njb4rn32pr48rawi2nyyf18kti – It’s going to be Eggcellent! 🙂

  6. Lemoni

    Just uploaded! Was pretty tough to be honest: hottest day of the year, house opposite caught fire, cat-sitting in my micro-flat so space was even more limited and very messy. Can I get a badge for taking part in the most challenging situation?!! Jokes aside, despite everything going on, I was amazed at how global fill worked. Great exercise.

  7. Hi, I’m a new member, first project, not much experience with studio lighting. Looking forward to learning and putting into practise. I’ve been struggling with colour cast, changed wb to flash in camera which helped reduce magenta. Using Godox. Wasn’t sure if you wanted pure white finished photos. Using live tether to lrc so can’t measure shadows etc.

    1. Hi, welcome to the platform and thanks for taking part in the Projects – just taking part is going to really help you develop your skills, don’t worry about the colour balance, this project is more about understanding shadows.

  9. Hello Karl

    For Project 2 – Controlling Shadows, I tried to photograph according to your specifications (shadow sharpness and density) using my Broncolor Stelos L800 flash units.

    I’ve tried several times, and even your alternative method of using a template with a smaller diameter in front of the flash didn’t produce the expected results in terms of shadow sharpness and density.

    So, I had to “really” complete the project with speedlights, which (I hope) wasn’t a problem in taking the required photos.

    Nevertheless, I hope you can show me an alternative solution using the Broncolor Stelos L800.

    Thank you and your team for sharing so much knowledge with people all over the world on your Visual Education platform, and for making it possible for me and all other photography enthusiasts to participate.

    Thank you, thank you!
    Greetings to your team

  10. GJPhoto

    Here’s my second question…

    In my example I used a light bulb and I noticed reflections on the bulb from my light that was bouncing off of the ceiling and I also noticed a second shadow starting to show up. 



    Why is this shadow showing up???


    Is this because the ceiling is too low? Is it because the bulb could still “see” my light? or is it something else that I’m not thinking of?

    1. Hi, I haven’t see your entry so i don’t know which one it is but it’s unlikely that a bulb bouncing off of a ceiling would create a defined shadow. The direct light of the bulb hitting the golf ball would cause a defined shadow (sharp edges), light bouncing off a ceiling would at best be a very soft shadow. If you have a second defined shadow then there must have been a second source of light from elsewhere in the room.

      1. GJPhoto

        So sorry for the confusion. I used a light bulb as a subject instead of a golf ball.

        – Wording on my submitted photos reads “No Global, Global 25%, Global 50%, Global 75%”
        – I used two constant lights to light it
        – Main light was was off to the side, like in your example
        – Second light (global) was used to control fill by bouncing light off of the ceiling (8 feet high)

        The second shadow showing up from the global light was very soft but still noticeable enough to be distracting in my eyes and I just wanted to know how to stop that second shadow from showing up, while still controlling the fill light in the shadows.

        1. Hi, if you’re talking about how do you make the shadow from the global illumination disappear then this is difficult to do because to do that it would have to be truly global coming in from all angles and not just from above, this would require white walls to the back, front and sides also with some illumination bouncing off of them. Technically this would be achievable with a bare bulb light it it was equidistant from each surface but hard to achieve so it is often done by using more lights in a white box studio.

  11. AnneMarie

    Hi Karl,

    I just uploaded my two images for shadow density. I have to go to my other job but will continue on with the project when I return. I really appreciate the “learn by doing” classes you make available to us and the replays especially since I can’t always attend live. Hope I am on the right track with my submissions.

  12. Project review question – this project fits perfectly in terms of skills for a project I have in mind – thank you. My question – how to manage to back ground lighting to make it whiter – whilst retaining the sharp edges of the shadow even though it will be lighter. PS I am working my way through the lighting course so if the answer is there somewhere past the emotion of light – then no worries.

    1. Hi, when you say background in this case do you mean the white surface? If so then the more global fill will of course add more overall illumniation to the surface, if you calculate your angle of reflectance from the camera (see this course: https://visualeducation.com/class/angles-of-incidence-and-reflection/) then you can increase global fill to come from a position that matches the angle of reflectance to maximise the white surface.

  13. Brian R.

    Would you appreciate short labels of what it is or what I did or is it best to leave that off? I did three two-shot montages for: Shadow density, hard and soft shadow, and inverse square law that covers what was asked and (I think) all of the badges.

  14. cini01

    Hi, just uploaded my first images! I didn’t have a golf ball handy, so I used one of those soft stress balls for finger exercises instead. 🙂 Hope that works too!

  15. Zoltán Bodó

    Hi,

    First of all thank you for the video and the exercise, I really enjoyed doing it.

    I can select only one picture to upload. Is it a bug or a new limit? I wanted to upload 5 shots on 3 images, shall I put all 5 on one instead?

    Thx,

    Z.

    1. Author

      Hi, you can upload 3 different images. Once you have uploaded your first image, the two additional upload image boxes will be visible. You can also combine images as a montage if you wish. Thanks Tim

  16. tastrong61

    More of a question, I missed the live… Anyway, @ 1:37:35 (or there about) you’re discussing the inverse square and light bouncing around the room as you do not have a modifier on the light. I’m wondering how a reflector like a 7″ Bowen’s style reflector would affect the shadows since the light would be more directional. I get the inverse square law but you’re showing it with bare bulb. Would the shadows be a bit darker on the shot where the light is further away?

  17. Hi sir, at 1:42:07 I saw the flash being used at full power, so I wanted to ask: is it true that using a flash repeatedly at full power can cause damage?
    One of my flashes got damaged—it fires 4 to 5 times and then stops. When I went to the service center, they told me not to use it at full power.
    In your opinion, is this correct or not?

    1. Hi, yes UV filters are used to reduce blue in the shadows, usually in landscape photography but often in product and fashion work we deliberately put it back because that’s actually what the eye sees.

  21. I thought that the focus is also on shadow density, which does not seem to be directly addressed in the text, “results we want to see”, though I can see it in the images – I assume that inverse square law will show a different shadow density but difficult to observe with the short distance between the golf ball and its shadow. As demonstrated by Karl, the shadow density would be much easier controlled by another light source or a reflector, rather than changing distances between the subject and the main light.

    1. Gary Stasiuk

      I agree, a core part of the learning seems to be about controlling the deepness and darkness, or lightness of the shadows while either maintaining the crispness of the shadow edge or being able to blur out those edges, even to the point of obliterating the edges altogether… all the while maintaining direction from the key light. For me, understanding the inverse square law either helps to predicts the result when shifting the light to subject distance or when a desired result is important to achieve.

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