The easiest way to get a good portrait lighting that works for a lot of people, I think, is to reduce it to a very simple setup. One light that comes slightly from above and the side. And maybe one light to act as both rim light from behind as well as lighting the background (depending on the type of background of course).
Easy to set up, shoot and shoot again
I shoot a lot of portraits for different companies, corporate portraits and ordinary headshots of employees, and sometimes portraits of authors for book publishers. Very often I find myself wanting to create something new, some lighting setup I haven’t used before. And, when trying to recreate that look next time I shoot for the same company, even with my lighting diagrams, it is often more work to get that same shot than it should be.
More examples and studio lighting diagrams after the jump…
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Recently I was asked to photograph a lot of garment for Swedish fashion designer and brand Fräulein von Hast, she was planning to start a web shop and needed photos of every skirt, blouse, jacket and dress she had available.
For every item she needed at least three, but more often four different angles so the customers can view the front, back and sides of the skirt or jacket they might be interested in.
This is how I set the light, planned the day and shot 325 photos.
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The Beauty Dish from Profoto (a white Softlight Reflector) must be the best light modifier for strong portraits in my opinion. But it takes either great make up or perfect skin (or, in this case, a model not afraid of showing every wrinkle). Used like this, you only need one light for a nice portrait.
This portrait uses the same studio lighting setup as the previous portrait in colour, but this time I got a happy face and converted it to black and white.
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As I try to make some of my portraits and lighting setups as simple as possible, one of my favorite lighting modifiers is the white Profoto Softlight Reflector, or beautydish as most people call it.
In this headshot of a very creative and talented Swedish artist and creator of children’s playgrounds (among a lot of other things) I wanted to use just one light, and have a lot of contrast in the portrait.
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When digging through my archives looking for a file that a client asked for, I found this portrait taken a couple of years ago, of Swedish illustrator Mati Lepp. It was shot during the same day I had a portrait session with Swedish fantastic illustrator Stina Wirsén (portrait and studio lighting diagram here).
During this day I shot around ten different Swedish writers and illustrators for a publisher, and used the same simple two-light setup for almost all of the portraits. A black background was wanted so they could use it for copyspace in their catalog (I don´t know if it is the correct term, or just something iStockphoto made up?). Anyway, it was easy to get the same look and feel to the portraits that way.
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