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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I have been a happy Profoto user a couple of years now, and it feels I am just getting the hang of it, trying to use different light modifiers for different results (and trying to master some of their products, not buying every modifier in their catalog, even if it is very tempting).
Apart from just looking at other photographers images, I learn a lot from studying studio lighting setup diagrams (and trying to do a lot of them myself as well), and watching lighting video guides when I have the time (and patience, some of them are very diluted and far from easy to understand).
Profoto did a series of short movies when they released their new monobloc series, D1 (250, 500, 1000 + Air), some time ago. In my opinion, they are exactly as I want video guides to be. Short, informative and with the very good narrator and photographer Tony Corbell. And they really makes me want to buy a couple.
Here are four different videos, each explaining one setup, together with the resulting images (it seems they haven’t done any retouching at all, which is good in many ways I think).
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Recently I shoot a couple of studio portraits for some ads, the client was a temp agency focused mainly on recruitment and staffing companies in the finance and banking sector. My assignment was to use their staff as models and create seven different photos all communicating the same thing – this might be the big company hotshots of tomorrow.
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Recently I helped an actress in Sweden with some headshots for her promotion material. The main idea was to take a couple of portraits in my studio without a lot of makeup and retouching, just her face, clean and simple.
As she has a calm face with a strong bone structure I opted for a classic clamshell lighting to focus on her eyes. Her black clothing and hair framed it nicely I think.
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