When you begin doing portrait lighting for the first time, the general advice you get is to put your light at 45º to your subject, and aim it down at 45º. It’s a quick way to get something reasonably good, without a lot of understanding. With a little more knowledge, you can make better lighting decisions, and get more dramatic images.

Light has four main properties:

1. Quantity
2. Quality
3. Color
4. Direction

In this article, we’re looking at direction of light only. If you look at the work of the Masters in painting, you’ll notice that they go to great pains to create light and shadow through their brush strokes. You can of course translate these to your own lighting. So let’s look at the different portrait lighting styles or patterns you can use.

To be able to see these patterns, your subject should be facing the camera. The key to seeing what’s happening is to pay attention to what the shadow is doing, especially the nose shadow.

Short lighting style

For this setup, I’ve used an Elinchrom BXR500 with a 44cm white beauty dish. The deflector is translucent, and I’ve added a grid to control the spill of the light. The Camera was a Fujifilm X-T10 with a Fujinon 18-55 lens.

The Portrait Lighting Styles

1. Butterfly Lighting

Butterfly lighting refers to the shape of the shadow under the nose that this pattern creates. It’s meant to look like a butterfly in flight, viewed from straight on. It’s also called Paramount lighting when used with guys to sound more masculine. If you look at the work of 30s and 40s Hollywood photographers like George Hurrell, you’ll see this lighting style in operation.

The basic butterfly portrait lighting, with no reflector.

First you should place your light on a boom stand, and position it so it creates a line between you, the light, and your subject. Your light should be high enough to create the butterfly shadow. If it’s too low, you won’t get a shadow and the light will be too flat. If it’s too high, you’ll have the nose shadow will cut into the lip.

As you look into the eyes of your subject, make sure you can see a reflection of your light. This reflection is called a catchlight, and helps give life to the eyes. If you cannot see the catchlight, lower your light a bit.

The basic butterfly portrait lighting, with silver reflector.

With Butterfly Lighting, it’s common practice to put a reflector (or even another light at lower power) underneath the chin to bounce light back up. This helps soften the look, and reduces the shadows caused by your light position. You’re not trying to overpower the light from above, as doing this will cast shadow upwards on the face, which isn’t particularly flattering.

Behind the scenes shot of the basic butterfly lighting, with a reflector.

2. Loop Lighting

For Loop Lighting, you’re looking for a loop shaped nose shadow. Move your light to the left, or light from the centre. You’ll see the shadow change shape. With Loop Lighting, the nose shadow shouldn’t touch the shadow side of the cheek.

Loop Lighting

You should aim to have the bottom of the nose shadow about halfway between the lip and the nose in position. With Loop lighting, you’ve got two main options for filling in shadows. You can use a reflector, or a second light from the opposite side of the face as the key light, or you can use an on axis (behind the camera) fill light (like a ring light or an Octabox).

3. Rembrandt Lighting

If you move the key light around a farther, the nose shadow will meet the cheek. Some refer to this as closed loop lighting, with the normal Loop Lighting being referred to as open loop lighting. From a technical standpoint, Rembrandt Lighting usually has a higher light position than closed loop lighting, but for most the term Rembrandt refers to any light that creates a triangle of light below the eye opposite the light source.

Rembrandt Lighting

You can probably guess that the name is based on the work of the painter Rembrandt. A lot of his portraits were painted while the subject was lit from a skylight or high window, giving that famous look.

Behind the scenes making a Rembrandt Lighting.

4. Split Lighting

You’ve moved the light slowly from straight on, and your final light style is when the light is perpendicular to the camera. You’re lighting only one half of the face. One of the most famous uses of this is The Beatles album ‘With The Beatles’, where all four members are split lit. You should only be able to see one eye in the shot for this pattern (the other will be in shadow).

Split Lighting.

Behind the scenes for Split Lighting.

Broad and Short Lighting

To show how the patterns work, you’ve shot straight on to your subject. In real life this is only one view that you’d capture. By turning the face to the side you get even more options. When the face is at an angle, there are two parts of the face visible, the broad side, and the short side. The broad side is the one nearest you, from the ear to the nose. The short side is the small bit of the side facing away from you, that you can actually see.

By aiming the light at the broad side of the face, you see the face in detail, with very little shadow. On the other hand, if you light the short side of the face, you get more shadow. These lighting positions are referred to as Broad and Short Lighting respectively.

You can use Short Light to flatter heavier subjects, as the shadow tends to hide weight in the face. Broad lighting is better for thinner people, and is often used in fashion. For the Short Light example, the light was in the same position as our Split Lighting, the model has just been turned towards the light. For Broad Lighting, you can have it any where in front, though for this example, it was off to camera right.

Broad Lighting (main light is to camera right).

Short Lighting (main light is to camera left, closer to the background than the subject).

Creating Drama

The trick to creating drama is to use shadow effectively. For this reason Short Lighting is the best option. You can use each pattern in a short light fashion.

Remember at the start, you were told to pay attention to the nose shadow? For Butterfly, you’re still looking for the butterfly shadow. The light will be directly in front of your subject’s nose to get this. As you move the light away, towards Loop position, it’ll start to become more dramatic. You can even do a Rembrandt portrait for really dramatic effect.

Rembrandt Lighting, Short lit with no fill.

Rembrandt Lighting, Short lit with silver reflector fill.

So that’s how to use common portrait lighting styles or patterns. You should get familiar with them, and as you look at magazines and online, you’ll start to see them in use.

Examples of Portait Lighting in photos

Short Lit Loop Light

Split Lighting

Butterfly Lighting

Short Lighting with a Butterfly pattern.

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Getting started in photography can be quite scary. We all start by investing in a DSLR, and think we are going to take amazing images. In reality it is a bit more difficult, because if it was easy… well everybody would sell prints, quit their day job, and live off photography.

Just like any art, photography has to be learned, and practiced – a lot. It is a trial and error process, we all start at the bottom and build our way up.

If your images do not look like you imagined them, then try a different approach. Just do something. Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

#1 – Gather information and knowledge

Photography is the best hobby you could have, but it is a lot of hard work. I personally don’t believe in talent. The first tip I can give you is to absorb as much information as possible. How do you do that ? Well you have so many free resources on the internet, the only need to take advantage of it. Since you are reading this, then you’re on the right track.

By resources, I mean articles online, magazines, and YouTube tutorials. You can learn so much in less than 30 minutes. One other tip I can also give is to check multiple resources for the same topic.

Read photography magazines. They have amazing stories and tutorials.

For example you want to learn how take portraits – don’t read or watch only one tutorial. The more you research, the more you will learn, because sometimes one article won’t give you all the answers to your questions, but another article will.

You should also anticipate. What I mean by that, is to learn about it, before trying to do something.

For example, say you want to buy a new DSLR. You should learn how to use it before you actually buy it, read reviews and tutorials. If you are planning a trip to the sea, then learn seascape photography before travelling.

Photography is spending hours and hours on research.

#2 – Try all kinds of photography

This brings me to my second tip: don’t focus on only one type of photography. Of course, if you like portrait photography then do that. What I’m trying to say, is that you should explore all the possibilities, before focusing on only one type of photography. Try to add variation by learning about macro photography, landscapes, portraits, wildlife, etc.

You may be surprised by the results you get, and if you never try, you will never know if you actually like photographing birds or not. From my experience, the more you learn, the more you’ll be able to do things. It’s better knowing how to do five things than only one. Starting photography and only wanting to take portraits is not the right mindset. It’s just like food, if you don’t try new food, you will never know if you like it or not.

#3 – Photography is an investment

The third thing you should know is that photography is a big investment. You will need to buy lenses, camera bodies, tripods, and filters, which will end up being quite expensive. If you are not smart with your decisions, then your bank account can end up in tears.

It may seem confusing when I tell you to try different types of photography, but then warn you about buying too much gear. If you want to try macro photography, don’t buy a macro lens right away. Just buy extension tubes (or close-up filters) until you know if you are serious about macro. They cost a lot less, and increase your focusing distance dramatically.

A very inexpensive $30 ND Filter.

For filters, you can buy $20 Neutral Density filters for your landscape photography. Of course they won’t have the same quality as the professional ones, but it’s a good place to start.

I started photography with a phone, then moved up to an entry level DSLR, and now I own a full frame camera. But, it took me four years to go from my phone to full frame, so don’t go out and buy the best DSLR ever, find something that will suit where are you starting first.

Phone photography

Make smart decisions, a normal kit lens is enough to get started in landscape photography.

#4 – Post-processing is a good thing

The fourth tip is about post-processing. Most beginner photographers underestimate the power of post-processing. It can make or break an image, that’s why my first point is important. You have to learn and fail in order to succeed – once you learn how to master software like Lightroom and Photoshop, your photography will become more like a process, because you will automatically think about post-production.

For post-production, I also recommend learning about the same topic from different sources. There are a lot of different ways to do the same thing, you just have to find which way works the best for you. It doesn’t matter how you do it, the important thing is the end result.

For example, for dodging and burning an image I prefer using a curves layer with a mask, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to dodge and burn using grey layers.

Post-production can be quite scary because there are so many tools, but once you master a certain software, you will be able to work on your worst shots and get the best out of them.

I would say that post-production is almost indispensable. There are a lot of photographers who want natural photography, but that doesn’t exist. Your colours will get interpreted anyway, it’s up to you to decide if you want your camera to do it automatically, or if you want to take control over everything.

Simple snapshot with my own interpretation of colors.

#5 – Good photographers create depth in their images

The last thing you should know is that photography is all about creating depth. There are many ways of creating depth; you can do it with light and contrast, colours, movement, a solid composition, and with depth of field.

You should aim to have at least one of these elements in your images. If you can mix all these elements in one image, then your result will be even better.

With light and contrast you can play around with shadows, and dodging a burning. The main purpose is to have uneven lighting on purpose – try to avoid flat lighting. Some area should be lighter than others, and some darker. You also want to know which lighting conditions will give you the best results. For example, if you like shooting landscapes then you will want to know that you get the best light during the magic hour (blue hour).

Composition is the most important thing, try to use a foreground, middle ground and a background. The rule of thirds is also really useful to frame your subject in a pleasing way.

With colours, the main purpose is to have tones that go together. Always look at your colour palette and see what works best. This is quite difficult to do, but one tip I can give you, is that when the colours do not look good, convert your image to black and white.

For movement, try long exposures, they are a good way to create a surreal images.

The last thing is depth of field. This is very important if you’re taking portraits, the amount of background blur can completely change an image. If you want to learn about it here’s another article I wrote: How to Achieve Background Blur or Bokeh where I explain three easy ways to achieve a nice bokeh.

Summary

So if you’re just getting into photography, consider these five things as you begin your journey. Learn everything you can from multiple sources, try different kinds of photography to see what you like, don’t get caught in gear envy, don’t be afraid of post-processing and remember to add depth to make more interesting images.

Are you further along in photography? What other advice would you offer to new photographers? Please share in the comments below.

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Image by Jeff Leonhardt

Common Photography Myths – Here’s My Take On This

How many of you were told things as children that you later found to be, at best, inaccurate; at worst, entirely untrue? I would venture to guess everyone has experienced this.

It just seems unavoidable that we will be exposed to all sorts of myths and questionable ideas. Some ideas are surely more dangerous than others, but we find them in nearly all areas of life, even in photography.

If you’ve never stopped to think about what some of those photography related myths are, below you will find a small sampling to mull over.

1. Technical Perfection Creates Better Photos

Quite simply, this is so often not the case.

Exposure, composition and sharpness are undeniably important qualities but they are not the ultimate measure of what makes a good photo. The belief that technical perfection is inextricably tied to crafting a worthwhile photograph is something I’ve addressed previously:

“The ability to create compelling photos relies most heavily on vision and instinct; it’s about capturing a moment. Moments — if we were to somehow think of them as being sentient things — don’t care about your f-stop or ISO setting.”

It seems too many modern photographers obsess about buying the perfect camera (when it’s arguable that there are no bad cameras on the market today) as a means of creating the perfect image.

Photographers of yesteryear, with their comparably crude cameras, made photos that have lasted the test of time. One of the many lessons that we, with all our technological dependence, should glean from the masters is that memorable photos aren’t necessarily perfect photos.

Try one of Photzy’s popular guides on the essentials of “Understanding Composition”. It’s a learned skill we can all improve on in order to make our photography, just better. Without a clear basic understanding of composition, your photography is highly likely to suffer as a result. No on wants that!

2. You Should Always Use the Lowest ISO Setting

If “always” comes off as being a bit hyperbolic, that’s because it is. Shooting at ISO 100 all the time in an effort to get the cleanest images possible just isn’t necessary in an era when more than a few digital cameras are capable of spitting out high quality images at ISO 3200 and higher.

You’re handcuffing yourself trying to stick to the lowest ISO setting in every situation. There absolutely are times when using the lowest ISO is preferable: landscape photography, long exposure photography and studio portraiture to name a few.

Otherwise, you should do whatever you need to do to get the shot; if that means boosting ISO, do it. A little noise won’t do any harm.

3. Less Depth of Field Means More Attractive Photos

Shallow depth of field and the bokeh that comes along with it, are surely pleasing to the eye, but these are not qualities that alone determine whether you’ve got a compelling photo. Not everything needs to be shot at f/1.8.

I understand that it’s tempting to constantly shoot wide open when you get your first fast prime, but it can easily be overused. One of the skills you have to develop as a photographer is assessing the relationship between your subject and the environment; once you figure that out, you’ll know that there are situations that call for f/1.8 and situations that call for f/11.

4. Manual Mode is the Best Mode

Championing the idea that manual mode is the ultimate measure of one’s expertise or that pros only use manual mode is painfully shortsighted. Possessing the know-how to manually control your camera is valuable, no question. But with that skill in your pocket, the shooting mode becomes a matter of choice.

Plenty of pros use aperture priority and shutter priority; there are even those who unabashedly use program mode. Why? Because as a photographer you adapt to your environment and do whatever it takes to get the shot.

Having a preference for one mode over another isn’t a problem; suggesting that one mode is invariably better than another is. Your best bet is to learn what each mode is generally most useful for and choose accordingly.

5. A Photo is a Reflection of the Truth

No, a photo tells a version of the truth. Even before you get into all the controversy surrounding images that have been heavily manipulated in Photoshop, it’s important to realize that a certain degree of filtering occurs before a shot is snapped.

A street photographer, for instance, might proclaim she simply captures the world as she sees it — which is true, but “as she sees it” is the operative notion here.

Another street photographer will interpret and capture the same scenes in different ways. Photographers must:

• Decide how they will portray their subject,
• What they will include in the background, and
• How they will present everything to the viewer.

The truth, then, immediately takes on a certain degree of subjectivity. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just something to be aware of next time you raise the camera to your eye and press the shutter button.

Conclusion

Much of what we learn about photography might easily be taken with a grain of salt — meter for “proper” exposure, use the rule of thirds, don’t shoot against the light.

I’m not suggesting that these are useless ideas but they are just that: ideas, guidelines that can — and often should — be ignored or reworked for greater artistic effect.

A proper exposure is whatever you need it to be to convey the desired mood; there are a multitude of ways to compose a shot; you can’t make a silhouette if you don’t shoot against the light.

Just remember, rules were made to be broken; myths exist to be debunked. Learn all you need to establish a solid foundation of fundamentals, then blow it all up and unleash the artist within you! These common photography myths are just that…myths.

Try one of Photzy’s popular guides on the essentials of “Understanding Composition”. It’s a learned skill we can all improve on in order to make our photography, just better. Without a clear basic understanding of composition, your photography is highly likely to suffer as a result. No on wants that!

Further Resources

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Jason Little is a photographer (shooting macros, portraits, candids, and the occasional landscape), writer, and music lover. You can see Jason’s photography on Flickr, his Website or his Blog.

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Over the last few years here at dPS we’ve noticed that the most common tool that our readers use to process their photos is Lightroom.

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