Here is a fantastic, business natured portrait. We’re going to give a brief breakdown to explain the lighting, and hopefully provide you with some inspiration for your next studio project.
This portrait consists of three lights:
1. The key light is a beauty dish to the camera’s left. The beauty dish is meant to give a concentrated, yet soft light; making it ideal for portraits. Beauty dishes come in a range of sizes, but they generally function like this: the light from the strobe reflects off of a central dish, illuminating the pan, and creating the characteristic light given by this modifier. Beauty dishes are often used with an additional diffuser over the front of the setup, for a softer look. Many wonderful portraits are made with this piece of equipment, and you can tell by the characteristic, small, circular catchlight in the subjects’ eyes. Seen here, there is a reflector positioned to the camera’s right, helping to fill in the shadows on the man’s face and body using the beauty dish’s light.
2. The second light is on a boom, slightly above and behind the subject. The strobe in this case was outfitted with a snoot, and used to highlight the subjects hair and shoulders. This helps to create separation of the model from the background, as well as add dimension to the figure. A snoot is a conical shaped light modifier used to direct the light and avoid any unwanted spill.
3. The final light positioned to the left of the subject is intended to light the background, adding a beautiful gradient to the backdrop. To avoid any light spilling onto the subject, there is a flag separating this light from the person being photographed.
That is the simple breakdown of this photo. An interesting challenge for you – find a picture that you really admire, and try to analyze and recreate the same look the next time you’re in the studio!
This awesome image and lighting diagram was provided by Toma Kostygina. You can view more of her work on her website: //www.tomakostygina.com/