The Pool Shark — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Por­trait Lighting

I’m start­ing to think that por­trait light­ing tech­niques are cause more argu­ments among pho­tog­ra­phers than HDR. How many lights do you need? Which lights are best? Which light mod­i­fier is best? Which light stand is best? For every lit­tle piece of gear in por­trait light­ing dis­cus­sions, there are vehe­ment debates about what is “best.” There are even debates as to whether you should say what is best, or give peo­ple infor­ma­tion to let them make up their own mind.

We like to cri­tique each other’s por­trait light­ing tech­niques, even if we don’t say it out loud. In fact, I have no doubt that a num­ber of peo­ple who read this arti­cle are think­ing that I should have used a rim light on this por­trait. Why didn’t I have some fill on her left side? Split light­ing is no good on women! You know. Stuff like that.

You know what I think? I think it’s OK to have some debates. Imag­ine how bor­ing it would be if we all used the same exact por­trait light­ing for­mula. Pho­tog­ra­phy would become devoid of cre­ativ­ity and expres­sion if we all agreed that one tech­nique was “best” and all pho­tos had to fol­low that same for­mula. I think it’s OK to be dif­fer­ent. It’s OK to exper­i­ment. It’s even OK to dis­agree about por­trait light­ing techniques.

I used one small flash in my por­trait light­ing setup for this pho­to­graph. My choice here was partly cre­ative and partly forced by neces­sity. The cre­ative aspect was to cre­ate an inti­mate por­trait because the envi­ron­ment behind her was so ugly that I didn’t want it in the image. The nec­es­sary part was the choice to use one flash because the bat­tery door on the other one broke. Oth­er­wise, she’d have some rim light on the oppo­site side of the key light. Shit hap­pens and you have to deal with it. Did I absolutely need the rim light? No. I needed one light. Even the win­dow light in this place was ugly due to a blue film on it.

Peo­ple who are much smarter about por­trait light­ing than I am have advised folks to keep things sim­ple. Start with one light. Work with one light until you come to a prob­lem. Then when you think you need a sec­ond light to solve the prob­lem, see if you can solve it with just one light. Many peo­ple are amazed when they find out that their feet can actu­ally move and cre­ate dif­fer­ent light­ing on their por­trait sub­jects. In other words, move the cam­era instead of mov­ing the light. See what hap­pens. Don’t nail your feet to the floor.

My friend Steve goes to a num­ber of por­trait light­ing work­shops, includ­ing some by Play­boy pho­tog­ra­phers. He men­tioned that one of those pho­tog­ra­phers will use up to 40 lights on a Play­boy cen­ter­fold shoot. My mind bog­gles at the expense and com­plex­ity of set­ting up a shoot with 40 lights. He assures me that each light has a very spe­cific pur­pose to draw your eye to part of the scene. I don’t doubt it.

On the other hand, I’m not shoot­ing for Play­boy. I have two flashes and three stu­dio mono­lights, and a vari­ety of light mod­i­fiers to make them work. Most of my sce­nar­ios are one or two lights. I bought the third mono­light for a spe­cific high key style. Here’s a behind the scenes shot to give you an idea.

High Key Setup — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

For this por­trait light­ing setup, I cre­ated some v-​flats with 4×8 foam core boards. There’s a mono­light behind each one aimed at the white cyclo­rama wall, and you can see the octa soft box on the right side. We used three lights for these high key shots, and again using a por­trait light­ing setup from Joel Grimes for com­posit­ing shots. The rest of the time, it was pri­mar­ily a one or two light affair. This is the same envi­ron­ment I used for my post How to Charm the Pants off a Woman. All I had to do was turn off the key light.

As I do more por­trait light­ing, even as I do more HDR, one thing keeps com­ing back to me as a con­stant in pho­tog­ra­phy. There’s no sense in buy­ing any gear until you know what prob­lem it will solve for you. That’s how you tell when you need another light, or a soft box, a grid, a new lens or even a new cam­era. I will guar­an­tee you that own­ing gear isn’t what helps you improve. It’s under­stand­ing how to use the gear for a given sit­u­a­tion. Does gear mat­ter? It does if it solves a prob­lem for you. There’s an old say­ing, “You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.” On the other hand, some peo­ple get too wrapped up in gear. I’ve found some stun­ning pho­tog­ra­phy shot with an iPhone. It was the mind behind the cam­era that made it stunning.

There are many dif­fer­ent approaches to pho­tog­ra­phy, and por­trait light­ing is no less of a choice based upon per­sonal taste. Embrace the dif­fer­ent tech­niques and learn what you like.