Advanced Studio Lighting Techniques

Advanced Studio Lighting Techniques

by William Lulow

Okay! You’ve now got an array of lighting equipment. You went out and bought a couple of flash generators and four or five flash heads, because you took some lessons and you now know how to set them up in your own studio. You’ve got a couple of different backgrounds and you’ve also got several light stands, reflectors, umbrellas, light modifiers and softboxes. So when are you supposed to use all of this stuff? And, are you supposed to use all of it all of the time? 

Well, the answer is “no!” Just because you have a piece of lighting equipment doesn’t mean it needs to be used for all situations. There are times when just one light will suffice. And then there are times when you need all the lights you have. 

One of the main reasons for using extra lights beside a main light and a fill-in light is to be able to separate your subject from the background to make it stand out and “read” better. Accent lights serve this purpose well. But they won’t always work if the background is already white for example. Or, they may not work on a bald head, for another example. Here is a portrait where an accent light would have been a disaster:

And here is an example where no accent lights would have been a disaster:

In the first example, the portrait attempts to define the person. So having highlights on the side of the man’s head would have been a distraction. In the second example, the woman had dark hair. Without the accent lights, the hair would have essentially blended into the background and thus would not have defined her head properly. 

Men can be lit differently than women. Not surprising, but you would be amazed how many photographers just continue to use the same lighting for all situations. A man is more rugged and thus can usually take a more dramatic lighting. Here is one example:

This portrait was lit with a main light only and no fill-in. The wrinkles on his face give him a more masculine look. Here is an example of a woman’s portrait:

Here, the woman’s face was surrounded with light. On top, my large, custom-made umbrella, and below her face a softbox fill-in light. Note that there are no shadows on her face. All the details are smooth. This is the lighting you want for portraits of women, generally. 

It is interesting to note that I often set up the studio with as many as five lights. Here is a diagram of how I do this:

Here you can see my umbrella main light, my softbox fill-in light, a background light that enables me to control its tone and two accent lights to provide highlights, if needed. Because I set them up doesn’t mean I need to use them. I can decide, based on my subject and the background, whether to use all five or only just one. Having the knowledge of what each light does and how to use it, helps a photographer achieve the results he or she is after. As I have said before, backgrounds often convey certain moods. If the background is white, it usually expresses a happy or “up-beat” mood and vice-versa for a dark background. So, the type of photograph you want to produce will dictate the kind of background you use and how you light the subject. 

Now, there was a job I had not too long ago that actually required the use of just about everything I had. It was a shot of about 40 employees of a company inside a large studio. This is the shot:

Everyone in this shot had to be visible and in focus, which meant that I needed to use a small aperture. This, in turn, meant that I needed enough light and power from my flash generators. The lighting setup for this shot was as follows:

This setup I call “Big Set Lighting” because it requires enough light on the background to render it white and enough light on the foreground to do the same. I also needed enough spread on the background to cover it from both sides. That’s the reason for the umbrellas. (Those background lights consisted of two sets of lights and umbrellas, making four lights on the background alone because I needed to have an even tone top to bottom).  I needed the same with my main lights. I had my main, big umbrella on the left, set up with two flash generators giving me about 2000 watt/seconds of light. I have what is known as a “quad head.” It is a light equipped with up to four flash tubes that allows me to get more power from a single head when I need it.  And on the right, I had another umbrella with only 1000 watt/seconds. The exposure was 1/125th of a second at f/10 and ISO 400. 

But unless you have a job like this, you don’t have to set up all your lights and use them for every situation. This makes all your portraits look the same no matter who your subject is. Think about what you want your portraits to say about you, as the photographer and your subject(s).