The Accent Light

The Accent Light

By William Lulow

After you have practiced using two lights, a MAIN LIGHT and a FILL-IN light, you may want to begin experimenting with the addition of a third light. Most portraits are okay with just two lights, but to get some real dimension to them, you will want to add some kind of highlight. The best way to do this is to place the third light somewhere BEHIND the subject and try to light her hair or shoulders. Any additional lights you add to your setup are called ‘ACCENT” LIGHTS. 

So, the lighting that I use often to add a little “kick” to my portraits is called the “EDGE LIGHT.” It is created by placing a light behind the subject and off to one side. The correct position of the Edge Light is shown in the following lighting diagram:

You can see that this light just illuminates the edge of the subject’s face. It should not spill over to any part of the front of the face at all. Below is an example of how the Edge Light is used with a Main Light to produce the desired effect:

Here you can see how the EDGE LIGHT produces a highlight on the “edge” of the subject head, lighting a bit of the hair and the side of the face. In order to produce the desired highlight created by an EDGE LIGHT (or any accent light, for that matter), the intensity of the light should be at least one f/stop brighter than the main light. You want the highlight to reproduce as white on the subject and to separate the subject from the background. You can measure the light by using a flash meter or incident meter and adjust its power or distance from the subject until the light reads one f/stop more than the main light. 

Look at photographic portraits in which the Edge Light has been utilized effectively. Try to spot the highlights it creates. Here is another example of a portrait in which I actually used two edge lights, one from either side of the subject:

Edge Lights make for really interesting highlights and are a good use of a third light in your lighting setup. One other “third light” setup is a HAIR LIGHT. This is how to set it up:

The trick to remember about the HAIR LIGHT is that it should only light the subject’s hair. So, it has to come from above and behind the subject. The illustration shows the HAIR LIGHT mounted on a boom above the subject, but it can also be mounted on a stand placed behind the background and aimed over it to hit the subject’s hair. Here is an example of what the HAIR LIGHT effect is:

Here, I have put a green gel over the hair light to give it a more dramatic look. You can see that the light does spill over to the subject’s shoulders, but not her face. The HAIR LIGHT was mounted on a light stand and aimed down at the subject’s head. 

Accent lights are just supposed to provide highlights to certain parts of an image. In all cases, make sure the accent light is one f/stop brighter than the main light in order for it to reproduce as white in the image.