A Simple Lighting Setup for Kitchen Portraits

Lighting  •  Photography Tips  •  Portrait Photography

To say lighting is an important ingredient of photography is an understatement. Lighting is everything in photography. It brings all the other elements together like the magic ingredient in Mom’s favorite recipe. In this quick video, photographer Gina Silva and her crew demonstrate how a simple lighting setup can produce stunning photos in one of the least likely places—your kitchen:

The setup for the shoot includes a 3’ Profoto Octabox and three speedlights. The softbox is used as the key light for the shoot and is triggered by a Pocket Wizard mounted on the camera. The three speedlights worked as background lights, illuminating the walls in the background, which made an interesting backdrop for the photos.

A Profoto 3′ Octabox was used as the key light.

CTL filters warmed up the light produced by the speedlights. Additionally, Honl gobo bounce cards ensured that the light didn’t spill.

The speedlights were gelled with CTL filters and gobos stopped the light spill.

Finally, a hair light with a speed grid was set up toward the right of the subject to illuminate the model’s hair.

Simple, yet effective.

Further training: Simple Food Photography