Photography by @larajadephotography featuring models @alinahust and @wemi_mo.
“I recently launched a new lighting guide for portrait, fashion & bridal photographers! The Light Guide (Studio Photographer’s Handbook) is a comprehensive studio lighting guide featuring 130+ pages of lighting education & theory. The guide includes 20+ detailed lighting diagrams!
Scroll through to see some of my favorite lighting setups I share within the guide! Which one are you most drawn to?
In celebration of the launch I wanted to share a couple of my favorite lighting tips!
LEARN BY LAYERING YOUR LIGHTING
If your goal is to master many different lighting setups and you want to use multiple lights – simply start with one light first then add more. You can visually see what the first light is doing, then tweak to your liking before adding another light. I like to call this ‘layering’. Having a solid understanding of what each light is doing helps you better prepare. Most of the time photographers use KEY lights (the light doing all of the work) and FILL lights (the light that fills in, often a bounce or hair light) in unison. This allows for much more control on set.
LEARN FROM CATCHLIGHTS
The devil is in the detail… or perhaps the secret is in the catchlights! See a photograph you want to emulate but you are not sure how it was lit? See if you can zoom into the subject’s eyes and look at what the catchlights are doing. This will help you decipher the lighting recipe. Large round circles are often large umbrellas or a 5’ Octabox. Square catchlights indicate soft boxes and very small circular catchlights could be a bare bulb strobe or strong continuous light. This little tip helped me out so much when I first started learning more about studio lighting!
Questions about the lighting guide or studio lighting in general? I’d love to answer them below!”
Ciao, Nihon.