Portrait Lighting Basics – Part One

When it comes to photography and lighting, so many are immediately put off that they go running off into the night, panicking unnecessarily.  Previously on the blog I had talked about how to set up a flash with an umbrella, and five things to be aware of.  You can read those herehereherehere, and here.

Now that we know how to set up our lights, it’s time to take a look at where to position our lights. You have a couple choices: directly in front, off to one side, or behind your subject.  We can talk about this until the cows come home, but it always is easier to show than to tell, so let’s take a look at each!

Here’s what happens when you put your light directly in front of your subject:

See how everything looks kind of washed out?  It’s not very flattering, so maybe we can move the light behind our subject and things will look a little better…after all, this isn’t really very good, right?

Here’s what it looks like when you put your light behind your subject:

Well, this is kind of interesting – putting your light behind your subject produces a nice little rim around the edge, but there is nothing but shadow in front.  Kind of hard to see details in the subject’s face.  Probably not good as a single light source solution.  Let’s try off to the side and see what happens.

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