Whether you are a beauty pro showcasing your work or just want to capture your own looks with selfies, the right lighting can make or break a photo or video. Better lighting will instantly upgrade the quality of your photography and result in more flattering images. 

Director and cinematographer Al Morrow has spent years perfecting lighting techniques for his work in television and commercials. He wanted to share his expertise by making professional Hollywood-style lighting accessible for anyone to achieve. 

Morrow set out to design a product that would make getting good lighting easy for everyone. In doing so he created BIGSOFTI, a lightweight on-the-go soft light that can easily be clipped onto your smartphone or camera. 

We caught up with Morrow to learn about his journey to launching BIGSOFTI and his top tips for taking your photography skills to the next level with beautiful lighting.

Can you tell us about your background and what inspired you to create BIGSOFTI?

So my background is in film and television where I’ve worked for around 15 years as a director and cinematographer. I’ve worked across a range of different projects from TV comedy to television commercial production for a bunch of the worlds biggest brands - (Volkswagen, McDonalds, Campbells, Expedia, and many more) both here in Australia and around the world (LA, London, Paris, Johannesburg, Rome, Singapore, Thailand).

An appreciation for lighting has always been a big part of my life, and I’ve always been drawn to find ways to shape the mood of a space with flattering lighting. Lighting literally affects how we see the world around us and it can actually be quite easy to make stuff look better if you know a few tips and tricks to creating nice shape in a space. 

When it comes to photography and creating imagery, photos and videos are all about the capture of light. And if you are giving a camera a good quality of light, it’s going to capture and create more flattering pictures. 

On a film set when lighting actor or models for scene, we will always use the biggest softest light sources to make them present perfectly on screen. A big light helps wrap around the facial features of talent and a soft light helps reduce the hardness of any shadows - which helps us make our subjects look their best. 

These are the same lighting principles that we have designed BIGSOFTI to achieve,  especially in the era of smartphone photography when we all carry around these fantastic little cameras at all times. Over the past 10 years the quality of the cameras have improved so much, however the mobile lighting options to complement the camera have not evolved at all. 

We set out to design a product that would offer the same principles of professional lighting but delivered to consumers in a lightweight stylish product that was really easy to use. We created it with a super simple interface so that people don’t have to understand the lighting theory behind the beautiful soft bright light, all they need to do is point it in the right direction and start creating better content.

What is BIGSOFTI? Why is it unique from other lighting options, and what makes it a good solution for those who want to achieve better lighting for beauty content?

So BIGSOFTI is an ultra lightweight, portable LED soft light that’s been designed to let people create better photos & videos on their phones, tablets, laptops, cameras, and more. 

We’ve designed it to be ideal for both beginners & experts alike who want to create beauty content, as it delivers perfect soft, bright light from photography grade LEDs to help them create beautiful, professionally lit images for tutorials, social posts or better lighting for makeup work. 

Our LED components have a super high CRI (96+) / TLCI (99+) scores - which means the light clarity leads to near perfect colour reproduction - and when it comes to capturing the details in markup or skin, high quality colour reproduction is key to truly capturing the looks.

BIGSOFTI offers 5 Brightness Presets and can be dimmed from 10%-100% for accurate luminance controls - and has 3 Colour Temperatures - so creators can select the right tone to fit in with the other light in a scene - COOL DAYLIGHT - day lit scenes / WARM TUNGSTEN - interior bulbs / CLEAN MIX - for an in between balance for most situations.

Content creators are not all sitting in their studios when creating their posts, so having a portable, option that is battery powered (long lasting rechargeable lithium ion battery) means they can have their BIGSOFTI in their kit, pocket or purse and can access professional lighting at anytime, on the go.

We worked with a team of award winning Australian Industrial Designers at VERT Studios in Sydney, so the product has a sleek and stylish look. Whether you’re using it on a night out, in a dressing room to see your makeup, sitting in an office on video calls - people love pulling it out in any situation as it always gets a compliment.

We’ve been really lovingly adopted by some fantastic celebrity makeup artists on instagram - and you can check out some of the story highlights (especially from NYC based Katie Jane Hughes who has become a real supporter of our little Australian brand). It seems to have really filled a gap in the market for beauty and makeup content creators.

We’ve also designed 3 different accessory mounts - so BIGSOFTI can be used across a range of different devices.  

Tap the touch control buttons to power on. Select your desired BRIGHTNESS from one of five presets - or dim from 10% to 100% for more accurate lighting control. Select your colour balance to suit your scene from a choice of WARM TUNGSTEN, COOL DAYLIGHT and CLEAN WHITE - and you’re ready to create professional looking images and videos from anywhere with the long lasting lithium ion battery powered soft-light. 

What are some of the biggest mistakes that amateur photographers and content creators make when it comes to lighting? Anything you wish you knew when you were first starting out?

Yeah, lighting is all about creating shape - so light placement is super key to capturing great imagery. Lighting from slightly above eye level is always going to be a more flattering angle. Anytime a light source is too low, the shapes it throws across your facial features are not going to look great. And unless you’re going for an intentionally dramatic look, a light source from too far on the left or right, is going to cast heavy shadows and create protruding shapes that don’t make us look our best.

A good rule for a strong image is for a multi-point light setup. This can be a 2 or 3 light setup. A 2 light setup (a key and fill light) is a typical way we light in TV - and has 2 lights at around 45 degrees either side of the subject - with the KEY light being slightly more powerful to create the more high lit side of the subject - and the FILL light, coming in from the opposite direction helps balance out the shadows, but not to the exact same level of luminance, so that there is still some shape retained across the facial features.

If you’ve got a 3rd light source, this would be positioned from behind the subject, to help capture a rim of light, separating your subject from your background. This is sometimes called a backlight or a hair light.

What types of light varieties does BIGSOFTI offer and do you have any recommendations for when to use one versus the other?

The main variation is in the colour temperature settings. BIGSOFTI has 3 settings that will each sit best in different lighting scenarios.

Correct choice will depend on what setting BIGSOFTI is being used. Say you’re working at home with some daylight coming through a nearby window - if you have the BIGSOFTI on the WARM TUNGSTEN setting, then your camera is going to have trouble balancing out the white balance - as one side of your face will seem to have a blue tint (as daylight has a very cool / blue hue to it) - and the WARM TUNGSTEN side will have a yellow / orange hue to it.  

So making sure that you’re selecting the correct coloured light for the setting, will ensure that the balance of light remains even and most natural looking.

Simply tap the Colour Temperature setting button to quickly scroll through the 3 different coloured light settings and pick the one that looks best with your surroundings.

COOL DAYLIGHT - day-lit scenes

WARM TUNGSTEN - interior bulbs

CLEAN MIX - for an in between balance for most situations.

Do you have any suggestions for getting the most out of BIGSOFTI? 

Playing and experimenting is always the best advice to discover new things that you like when creating imagery. Try placing the camera at different heights and sides and see what you can create. Try placing the BIGSOFTI in different positions to see what kind of effect you can get.  

Play around with the colour settings to see which works best - you never know, in some circumstances, using the “wrong” coloured light might create a really unique look that could make your work standout.

If the goal with your imagery is beauty, maximum softness is going to be your best friend. While BIGSOFTI already has an in-built diffusion panel that softens the light output - you can always play around with putting it in behind some translucent material to create an even larger light source.  

A cheap, fun at home hack would be to grab some baking paper roll from the kitchen and tear off a foot long section -  if you can shine your BIGSOFTI into the back of that, and position it close to your face - you’ll in effect be creating a foot wide light source - and remember, the secret to beauty photography is a bigger, softer light source - so this little trick can help turn your pocket sized BIGSOFTI soft-light, into a foot wide light source! 

Besides BIGSOFTI what are your other must-have tools for on-the-go photos/video?

The old saying goes, “the best camera is the one you have with you.” We end up shooting so much of our brand stuff just on my iPhone 12 Pro - as it’s in my pocket 24/7.

Our smartphone cameras today are 100 times better than our digital cameras were from even 10 years ago. The must-have is “good lighting.” They are capable of creating such amazing imagery - so give them good light, and they’ll repay you with professional looking photos and video every time.

Anything from BigSofti that we should watch out for in the future?

We’re in the middle of another design round at the moment. We’re exploring some new accessory designs based on customer feedback we’ve had from our beauty and makeup influencers to help make the BIGSOFTI experience even more versatile. We’re also working with some new LED technology for a future main light release to supplement the BIGSOFTI range.

BIGSOFTI Technical Specs:

• Custom soft-light diffusion panel

• Touch sensor buttons

• 5 Brightness Settings

• 3 Colour Settings: COOL DAYLIGHT, WARM TUNGSTEN, CLEAN WHITE 

• Up to 1200 LUX @ .3m (can be dimmed 10%-100%)

• 70 bi-colour 2-in-1 LEDs

• Photography grade LEDs - CRI 95+ and TLCI 99+

• USB-C port

• 1500mAh li-poly battery

• Rechargeable: Up to 10h run time (approx 1.3h at 100% brightness)

• Battery indicator panel

• 100% Compostable Eco Packaging

• Slim fit styling - slips in your pocket

For more information, check out BIGSOFTI’s FAQ page. Spa & Beauty Today readers get 15% off BIGSOFTI with code SPAANDBEAUTYTODAY15.

Read more: 4 Photography Tips for Beauty Photos

[Images courtesy of BIGSOFTI]

A University of Michigan graduate, Lizzy Sherman is an award-winning digital content writer/editor. Her work has appeared in publications including Beauty Launchpad, Nailpro, DAYSPA, CNET, Entertainment Tonight, and more. She has been a featured guest speaker at Cal State University Northridge, Digital LA, and The National Association of Audience Marketing Professionals. When she's not writing, Lizzy enjoys yoga and playing guitar. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter: @zillizy, @zillizy16