one light portraiture

One-light portraiture: “The beauty of working with one light source is the simplicity of what-you-see-is-what-you-get. So many photo shoots within the studios get so complex really really quickly, and what we want to talk about is simplifying our lives a little bit. So we’re going to go through a series of one-light portraits.

For the first one I’m going to move a light in really close to the background, almost touching the background. This is going to do a couple of things. I’m going to be able to be clever enough to let this light also light my background and my subject. It gives us a nice gradation, eliminates any shadow from the model, and really makes a nice one-light quick set-up.

The second one-light set-up that we did was very simple: it was one light set at 45 degrees to the camera, 45 degrees up high, and a reflector. It was a real simple shot. You’ve got to make sure that the reflector is forward enough so that it picks up where the main light stops off. If you look at the samples with the reflector and without the reflector, what you notice is that the reflector does make a tremendous difference.

The last of the one-light set-ups that we did is unique because it showcases the ability to make one light look as if it were three. I start by removing the softbox, and I create a situation where this one light source can become my main light, my background light, and my fill light all at the same time. I drop translucent fabric in between the light and my subject, that lets direct raw light skim past and light up the background. I bring in a reflector in front of the diffuser and use that as my reflector-fill, almost as a fill light.

Once you conquer one light, and once you can create a lot of different looks with one light, you can conquer anything.

The more lights we add, after we go past that one-light, it becomes more complex. Everything becomes a little more difficult, and you have to think through how everything might affect each other.” –Tony Corbell

two light portraiture

Two-light portraiture: “The interesting thing about working with two lights is the ability to not just separate the main light from the background, which we were able to do with one light, but now we can separate them and control them, and that’s totally different. On the second two-light set-up we’ve got a main light coming from on top and a fill light coming from below. This is kind of like a glamour set-up, some people call it clam-shell lighting. The beauty of this is that it really accentuates cheekbones.” – Tony Corbell

three light portraiture

four light portraiture

Four light portraiture: “I always start with my main light. That’s where my first exposure reading is taken. I establish that foundation, and then everything is then relative to that: my background lights are either brighter than that or darker, and everything is relative to that one main light. In order to keep detail in highlights you need to make sure that accent lights and any light coming forward is at least one / one-and-a-half to two stops below what you’re shooting at.” –Tony Corbell