Adventures in Photography: Lighting Setups

We have a light off camera and the ability to control the quality of light, so now what? Where do we put it? Lucky for us a lot of extremely smart and talented people have done a crap ton of work for us. While learning, I'm a huge proponent of copying people. When you learn an instrument you learn songs other people wrote. No reason we can't do the same thing for photography. Portraiture started way before the camera came along and the artists behind the brushes had the same things to worry about as people with cameras. Another advantage we have is electricity so we can make our own light almost whenever and wherever we want. There are a few traditional lighting setups for portraiture that I'll let someone who knows what they're talking about explain here. Using these setups you'll probably get a nice picture of someone. This lecture from B&H goes through a lot more looks you can get with one speedlight. He has some more equipment including a reflector but the point is you can do quite a lot with very little. So, read the articles, watch the videos and go try stuff!

I was able to steal an hour of my girlfriend's time recently to pose as my model. I spent half the time indoors and half outdoors. I'll talk about the outdoor stuff next time since that is a mildly overwhelming subject in itself. It was important for me to focus on one thing at a time. I have almost impossibly high standards for myself and if I try to do everything at once I'll fail at all of them and get discouraged. Not exactly the attitude I want to exude when I actually start taking pictures of someone on the cusp of one of the biggest transitions in their life. So I chose to focus on exposure. I ignored posing, backgrounds, composition, wardrobe, hair and everything else. At this point it's more than enough to try and figure out what camera settings to use since I'll be in full manual mode on my camera nearly always. Once I get comfortable with shutter speed, iso, aperture, and how they relate to one another, I'll be able to focus on all the other stuff that makes a good photo. So, I picked out a few lighting setups I wanted to try and went at it. Don't judge too harshly.

One quick note, I did get a softbox for some of this shoot. If you've been digging around on your own (I hope you aren't only listening to me) you might have heard a few reasons and situations why you might want one. I got one almost exclusively for this shot.

f/16 1/250 sec. iso 100 55mm

Rick Sammon had a video where he did this and I thought it was killer! This was shot in my living room and the camera settings gave me a completely black frame without flash. This way I know that the only light in my photo is the light I put there. It's a little under exposed in my opinion and I forget what power my flash was at ( probaly 1/16 or 1/8). I also don't have a black background so I was fighting light spilling on the wall behind her. Shooting in RAW will give you a bit more leeway when it comes to editing which I'll get to, but this is straight out of the camera, unedited.

Here is another photo with nearly identical settings and light position using the umbrella.

Umbrellas shoot light everywhere! It's all over the wall ten feet behind me. Sure a background would help out but then I need another two stands, a crossbar, and some black cloth or paper. The softbox kept the light where I wanted it.


This one they call clam shell lighting. It's used a lot in fashion photography and it looks awesome on women.

Pretty apparent I wasn't worried about backgrounds in this one. You can see in the window behind her the reflection of the umbrella which is about 2 feet in front and above her pointed down. You can see another reflection in the bottom of her eyes. That's the reflector. It's sitting in her lap angled up and resting on the light stand (I'll try and get photos of setups next time I shoot.) The umbrella and the reflector make a sort of "clam shell" shape and there's just enough room at the "hinge" of the clam to put my lens in.

Here's what it looks like without the reflector. Nothing else is different.

The reflector fills in the shadows under her chin, nose, and eyes giving a more even flattering light. Man, I like clam shell lighting.

In this photo, the flash is in the umbrella to help get a  little light on the background. It's up and to camera left. I followed the "45 degree rule" here. Imagine that if you look down on the scene your subject is at the center of a clock and you are at the 6 o'clock position. The light is at about 7:30. The light is also about 45 degrees up. Using our clock example again, this time looking at the scene from the side, the subject is again at the center and you the photographer are at 9 o'clock this time. The light is pushed up to about the 10:30 position. All the experts say this is a good place to start and encourage adjusting to taste from there. I added the reflector at a 45 degree position on the camera's right side and used another light stand (yes more stuff) to hold it up propping it on her leg to get more light under her chin.

This next photo is the same setup as the above photo but I added another flash. Yup, bought another one. Remember, for the price of one Canon or Nikon flash you could get 5 of these Yongnuo flashes.
The additional flash is acting as a hair, or kicker light to separate her from the background. The flashes come with a tiny stand that has tripod threads in the bottom. I'm sure if you're into photography whatsoever you have a tripod. If we go back to our first, top down clock example, this light would be at about 1:30. It's bare bulb, or no umbrella or other modifier in front of it. I adjusted the power so it was brighter than my main light, but not so bright that her hair was blown out.

Pro tip: Don't tell you model to look at the light no matter how dim it is! I told her to look at the light which wasn't a bad picture but it resulted in a sneeze and her seeing spots. The sneeze is the culprit of the messier hair, but remember, we're focused on getting a good exposure and nothing more. Here's the eye damaging pic. If you're ever wondering what kind of light was used in a photo, look at the eyes. The reflections in them should give you a good hint as to where the lights are.

In the next post I'll take this show outside and get into all the fun stuff you need to consider when using a flash outdoors. That's right, camera settings!