Five Lights and Two Reflectors

What I like about photographing in the studio is that it gives me total control, particularly in the way I light it. When you are on location, you need to be able to incorporate the light that exists and then add supplemental lighting to create the final image. In the studio, you start with black and add light where you want it.

Sometimes, what appears to be a simple image can prove to be quite complex from a lighting perspective. The image accompanying this post appears as a straight forward head shot. However, it took five lights and two reflectors to create the lighting that I wanted. Here's how I put this lighting together.

The primary light source, the one lighting the face, is a 3ft x 3ft soft box placed almost directly above the camera. The lighting pattern this gives on the subject is a butterfly style of lighting. Even though the light source was large, the shadows created on the face were still a little to deep. By using two reflectors below and on either side of the camera, I was able to direct light into the shadow areas that I wanted to open up. I have at times used a single reflector directly from underneath, but I found that I did not have as much control over the placement of the light.

To add depth to the image, I put a light on the background. It is very important to make this light as subtle as possible. Too bright and it becomes distractive, too dark and you will not get the separation.

This subject has very dark hair. The danger with very dark hair is that if it is not properly light, it will blend into the background and have no detail - it will just be a black, flat area in the image.. To light the hair properly took three lights - one directly from the top and one from each side. the lights were placed behind the subject with lighting controls that allowed me to carefully aim the light source and prevent the light from flaring the camera.

Five lights and two reflectors to create this head shot. But the results are well worth it.