Wow. This is quite a month! First off I’d like to congratulate Cris and everyone involved with ProPhotoResource on our first anniversary! It’s been a fun ride and I am looking forward to an exciting future with PPR. The anniversary of PPR also coincides with the release of my third book, Softbox Lighting Techniques for Professional Photographers .

Successful portrait lighting is all about the play of light upon the face, and the drama it creates for the viewer, but “drama” does not always mean “exciting” or “tense” or “emotionally gripping”.  One of my dictionaries (the one that came with this word processing program, actually.  I can’t find the other one.), defines drama as a “real-life event or situation that is particularly exciting or emotionally involving”, traits, I think, that any portrait should have.

You all know that I’m a Canon guy and, as such, much of what I write is biased toward that gear.  Still, I know that other manufacturers make darn good stuff.  While I’m not familiar with all of it, I’m pretty certain that most of the things I can accomplish with my Canon equipment can be done with other gear as well.  I guess what this means for you is that, if I describe something that doesn’t jibe with what you work with, you’ll have to check your instruction manuals, or go into MacGyver M ode, to figure out how to make it work for you.

My “hard-soft” lighting article created some discussions last month. Some people wondered why I would introduce a small light when the large light source was soft and beautiful. Others had questions about controlling the mechanics of a hard-light combination and the different effects of combining different light sources. The answer to the first question is perhaps easier to address. I use light and different light sources for many different reasons and to create many different effects. You decide how the viewer will see your image by placing lights in ways that will guide where he or she will look first. Our eyes are drawn to the point of greatest contrast in an image. Ideally that spot is the subject’s face.

There have been several questions posted about combining a hard light source with a soft light source. The technique, cleverly named the “hard-soft” technique, is one of my favorites. In fact, I use some variation of it on almost every shoot. Technically I use a hard-soft lighting scheme every time I use a spotlight fill light on conjunction with a softbox. However, the technique, in a more narrow sense, is when the hard light is placed along the same axis as the soft light.

In the realm of fashion photography, in particular of fashion advertising, one style of lighting seems to dominate the rest. Flat, almost perfectly even light over the background accent a model who’s lit from one side and who shows deeper than usual shadows on the unlit side. The net result is an image that projects a heightened reality, something larger than life.

The first time I heard the term “One Light Wonder” was from a newspaper colleague who was using in a self-deprecating way to describe his own lighting style.  That style was typically one large light source in conjunction with the ambient light to create a portrait that had feeling and reproduced well in newspapers and magazines.a

The last excerpt from my book Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers , proved to be a popular addition to the other fine columns here at ProPhotoResource. Many of you emailed to tell me how much you liked my article on Rembrandt Light , and how it helped you think about the relationship of key light placement to your subject. Thank you. The position of the key light to your subject is extremely important to the success of your image, and I’m happy to know you appreciate that fact.

Quite often I receive an architectural assignment where the client asks for shots that are romantic, airy, crisp, bright, soft, rich, moody or some other broad adjective. In my experience, the client is simply asking for a lighting style that evokes a certain mood. Let’s talk about some aspects of lighting that contribute to mood.

Last month I mentioned that one of my friend’s and studio-mates had picked up a beauty dish. I showed what happened when I shot one of “my” beauty headshots with the dish rather than my 30”X40”softbox with a CircleMask. The results received mixed reviews from my standpoint. However, I am not one to give up so quickly on a new toy so I put the beauty dish through its paces. I used the dish in several of my favorite set-ups and played around. Here are some of the results:

I first heard of a “beauty dish” on this website. As fate would have it one of my buddies just picked one up for the studio so I got to borrow it and play with it for a little while. I was surprised when I first saw it—it looked like a wide parabolic reflector with a silver piece right in front of the flash tube. The light fires, bounces off the silver “card” and then bounces again from the dish to form what I found to be a surprisingly harsh light source.  

Looking for a new twist to your portrait lighting? Here’s a lighting scenario that’s simple, dramatic, and extremely evocative. A true “painterly” light, this style is named after the Dutch artist and the way he painted the light that fell on his models. Legend has it that, like many of the starving artists of his time, Rembrandt worked in a small, dingy room that was anything but a studio. The only natural light came from a small skylight set high in the ceiling which threw deep, long shadows under his subject’s eyes, nose and chin.