Portrait Studio Lighting

Lighting  •  Photography Tips  •  Portrait Photography  •  Studio Photography

In this video, Lindsay Adler presents a segment on studio lighting essentials. Everything you need to know from the equipment itself to the different uses of specific lighting, fill cards, and other various tips and tricks from the trade—you can find it here. The video is over an hour long, but it’s full of useful information for those interested in studio photography. There is a strong emphasis on beauty photography and how to enhance features and use highlights and shadows for artful effect. Lighting can make a world of difference in a photograph and a lot of the information here can also be applied to other forms of photography:

Some of the main points from the video include the various types of lighting, with an emphasis on strobe lighting (flash lighting) versus constant lighting (light bulb). Lindsay briefly covers the benefits and drawbacks of constant lighting, but goes on into great detail for strobe lighting.

Benefits of Strobe Lighting

• Highly variable output with total control
• High output levels possible
• Can control balance with ambient
• Easy to control ratios of light
• Stop action (flash duration)
• More light modifiers

Drawbacks of Strobe Lighting

• Often require more power
• Less expensive brands = less control
• No video capabilities
• Harder for beginners to see actual ratios and appearance of light

When controlling the flash output, Lindsay recommends going with Pocket Wizards and Radio Poppers over Sync Cords and she tells us that in her own studio kit, she includes:

• Canon 5D, Canon 5D Mark 2
• Canon 50mm 1.4 Lens
• Canon 85 mm 1.8 lens
• Canon 70-200mm 2.8 lens
• Softbox
• Octobox
• Beauty Dish
• Barn Doors
• Strip Light
• Umbrellas
• Fill Cards
• Gobos (go betweens)

The video goes into great detail about various forms of lighting and tips and tricks for making the most out of each of them. A small list of some of the different techniques covered includes:

• Rembrant lighting
• Split lighting
• Paramount lighting
• Loop lighting

These different forms of lighting play on shadows and highlights, give more definition to one side or area of the face or body and allow for artful effect. At the end of the segment she also goes over profile photography and the do’s and don’t’s for making the best out of these difficult shots. For the full scoop on anything you need to know when it comes to studio photography, watch the video and be prepared to learn!