What will you need this for? You will need this when your taking portraits of people. The lighting that you will be learning about can affect your picture in many ways. Study these different types of lighting and then when you get comfortable with them you will be able to use the effectively in your photos.

Interview Lighting

Key Light defined: The primary or dominant source of light in a shot. It often suggests an out of frame source. Choice of fixture (hard or soft) and its position will help set the mood of the shot.

KEY LIGHT

Key LightingSoft Key Light

Uses an egg crate to control the lights spill.

Soft Key Light will make the photo diffused.

Hard Key Light Uses a 250-watt Pro-light. Hard Key Light will make the

a dramatic change between light and dark in the photo.

When you practice placing the Key light on your subject, keep an eye on the shadow it creates from the nose.

You should move the key light so that you don’t have a nose shadow. You should move your key light so that the lights blend and create a smooth lighting.

Key Light Techniques

If you want to have a simpler setup for your shoot you could use one light as the key and fill light.

A back light could be helpful to add the finishing touch on the person’s hair.

In the picture to the right you can see they use one light in the front and a small light in the background.

Experiment with the positioning of the lighting.

Simple Light Setups

Fill light is used to lighten shadows. Combined with the Key light, Fill light helps define the mood by lighting the shaded areas in a range of intensities. The amount of fill light can vary from none, to a level equaling the Key light.

Fill Light

After setting the Key light, you may find that the darker side of the face is too dark for your tastes. That is where the Fill light comes into place.

Fill light lights up the side that is left shaded.

The amount of Fill light that is needed depends on what your preference is so experiment with the amount of lighting.

You can adjust the feeling of the photo by adjusting the amount of Fill light.

Fill Light

The fill light is used to fill the shadows in so you must adjust the light so that the shadows are blended smoothly.

You will need to experiment with the amount and the positioning of the light so that you get the lighting you are looking for.

Fill Light Techniques

A) Lower ratio of Key to Fill lightB) B) Higher ratio of Key to Fill lightC) C) Double Nose Shadow

Another method of providing Fill is by bouncing the Key light off of a reflector. A specular reflector will kick back nearly as much light as the Key light shining on it, in the same degree of hardness that strikes it.

Reflected Fill Light

Specular Reflector bouncing Soft Key light to create FillCloseup detail

Hair light is a light from behind the subject, often weaker than the Key or Fill, aimed at the head & shoulders. It may also called a backlight. It separates the subject from the background and adds highlights & shine to hair, and is often widened to include a subject's shoulders.

Hair Light

Hair light is a finesse lighting that can be used along with Fill.

Traditionally Hair lights are placed directly opposite the camera. It creates highlights and gives a nice shine to the hair.

If you are dealing with thinning hair or bald heads, you probably already have enough separation from the background; either because of the contrast or color differences, and only want to play with adding a subtle edge to the side of the head and neck. For shiny heads you could have separate lights for each shoulder or put up a traditional hair light and block, or flag, the part of the light falling on the head.

Since all backlights are aimed in the direction of the camera be careful to keep any light from shining into the front of the lens, causing lens flare.

Hair Light Techniques

Edge light defined: A light from behind the subject, often weaker than the Key or Fill, is placed to create an edge of definition between subject and background. Similar in practice to Hair light, it is also a form of backlight normally used to define one dark object from another, for example a dark jacket from a similarly dark background.

Edge Light

Edge lights create subtle defining 'edges', and line-like highlights, which can be added to your setup to delineate the edge of your subject.

If your subject's dark hair or jacket seems to blend into a similarly dark background you can add an 'edge' to visibly separate, or cut them away, from the background.

It is popular to have a light edge along the jaw line. Try hard sources at different distances and angles. Try using a small light with an umbrella or with a diffusion gel.

Edge lights are also aimed in the direction of the camera, so be careful to keep any light from shining into the front of the lens, causing lens flare.

Edge Light Techniques

Background Light defined: Used for lighting the background of a set, as a whole or specific areas. Or for lighting objects in the background of the set that are significant to the image. It also contributes to creating separation between subject and background. It is possible to use multiple background lights.

Background Light

By the time you've put up your Key, Fill, Hair and Edge lights you might have light bouncing off the walls and ceiling lighting up the background too much. You can try turning off any room lights, or by adding distance between the subject and the background. In combination with these is the ability to control the lights you've placed in the setting.

Since large broad sources tend to spill on the background consider using an Egg Crate on any soft lights you use

Background Light Techniques

Slash Accent- made by putting 2 barn doors close together.

You can mix the slash with general background fill, making it less prominent, or use the slash accent alone in a darker background to increase its effect. Coloring the slash with a gel is also a common approach.

Slash Accent

Highlight Accent- adding a highlight to an object in the setting.

In this shot, we used a tiny L-light with 100 Watt lamp directed to place a small pool of light on the flowers and the picture frame. The hard light of the lamp created a sharp shadow.

Highlight Accent

Color Background provides a contrast of color and feel between the environment and the subject.

In this shot, we added red gel to an Omni-light, focused wide enough to cover the background area of the shot.

Use barn doors on the fixture to trim any spill that may fall on the subject, as its color will make it very noticeable.

Color Background