Studio Lighting Workshop

Studio Lighting Workshop July 21, 2023

by William Lulow

Note: Thanks to our model Sydney and students Alicia, Jennifer, Brandon and the other participants.

We had a pretty good turnout for our Studio Lighting Workshop last Friday, July 21, 2023. A couple of former students as well as current ones were on hand for a demonstration that featured a number of studio lighting setups. This was a kind of a condensed version of what my classes at Manhattan’s New School for Social Research were back in the 1990s. It was just the beginning of the digital age, but all lessons the students did were with traditional cameras and prints. I would give an assignment that included each one of the “Studio Lighting Setups” and we would spend the first part of the class analyzing the students’ efforts. We all could determine, objectively from students’ prints, whether or not they understood the concepts. I also showed many examples from famous photographers who had used all the setups in their various images. My classes were fully booked for ten years or so.

During this particular workshop which only lasted two hours, I showed how to set up each one and what the results were right then and there via CAPTURE ONE software. The best feature of learning about studio lighting is that once you do, you will never look at a photograph or even a scene again without noticing the lighting!

Here I am starting the workshop:

Note: Just a note about using the laptop and this software during a photoshoot: it is very handy to see your results on a larger screen than the LCD of a digital camera. But I learned a long time ago that looking at results after every few shots really interrupts the flow of a portrait session during which I am trying hard to get just the right combination of lighting, pose and expression to bring out a bit of my  subject’s personality. The kind of examination this technology affords is much better suited to still life work, where every facet of a particular photograph can be examined in much greater detail.

Here is an example of a HALO LIGHT:

This is one lighting setup that I don’t often show, but today, I went through all of them. The way to execute this one is by placing the light directly behind the subject and making sure that the her shadow is cast on the camera’s lens.

Here, the HOLLYWOOD LIGHT:

The Rembrandt Light:

The Side Light:

The “Monster” Light:

The Edge Light:

The Rembrandt Light (With Fill-in):

The Cross Light:

The Silhouette Light:

The Hollywood Beauty Light:

Here you can see that this lighting setup is composed of a HOLLYWOOD LIGHT mainlight, a MONSTER LIGHT fill-in, and two EDGE LIGHTS. The addition of the EDGE LIGHTS creates the shine on the hair. In order for the effects of these lights (sometimes called ACCENT LIGHTS) to be seen and/or recorded on a print, they must be at least ONE STOP BRIGHTER than the main light. This can be achieved by moving them closer to the subject or increasing the power to them. Some people call this a “CLAMSHELL” LIGHT because one light is above the subject, the other below. The real operative principle here is that the lower part of the clamshell is really a FILL-IN LIGHT because it comes from the opposite side as the main light. The thing to remember here is that the fill light should never overpower the main. All you want it to do is to eliminate any shadows.

I did not do any retouching on these images at all because I wanted just the lighting to be seen.

This is an image that has been retouched a bit. The angle of the image has been changed, the hair has been cleaned up a bit and the entire image was reduced in light intensity about 15%. It is an EDGE LIGHT and demonstrates the kind of image that can be obtained by applying these lightings correctly:

I have provided the lighting diagrams for each of these STUDIO LIGHTING SETUPS in other articles which you can access from the “older posts” archives on my website here, but I will re-publish them on a future blog article.