Portrait Lighting - Broad

20110614 – Broad lighting

During this session, we threw together the setup as shown above.

This three light setup consists of:

1. The first light is a key light.
   Usually this is the strongest light and this light sets the lighting of the scene.
   We used a medium softbox camera-right, set at half power.
   
2. The second light is called a fill light.
   This light helps fill the shadows that the main light casts.
   This was behind the subject, camera-left.
   
3. The last light is called a backlight (because it comes from the back), and is used to create a contour and separation.
   It is common to use a snoot or a gridspot on the backlight to avoid a spill.
   We actually just used a flash-head from high up, with some small directional cone...(unsure of name).
   

An interesting webpage to read might be:
http://www.diyphotography.net/3-point-lighting-technique

A great video on YouTube is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH84-pA7p-c

The video discusses:

1. Rembrant – signified by triangular highlight on models cheek, light is 45 degrees off centre, infront of the model, camera left
   
2. Butterfly – signified by the butterfly shaped shadow under the models nose, glamorous in appearance, the light is 90 degrees off centre high up pointing downwards
   
3. Edge – this is very dramatic, light is the same height as the model, at 0 degrees to centre (same plane as the model)