Portrait Lighting Tutorial: How to Use the Main; Fill; Hair; Background; and Kicker Lights Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

Hi, I'm Tony Northrup and for my book
Stunning Digital Photography, I'd like to
show you the four different types of
light in traditional portrait work.
Now the first I'd like to show you is the
main light. And the main light front
lights your subject. When you're outdoors,
this is probably going to be the sun or
it could be a reflector that you're
holding in front of your subject.
If you have the flash on, the flash is
going to be your main light. So I'll take
a picture with just the main light now.
Now looking at that picture you will see
really harsh transitions from bright to
dark.
That's because we just have one light
and absolutely no fill light.
So if you want to soften the shadows,
we're going to add some fill.
Now I have the main light off to camera
left and I have the fill light behind me
here, off the camera right. So what I'll
do now is turn on this fill light and
then take a second picture with the fill
light on.
So as you can see, by adding fill, you
still have some of that dramatic light
and you can still see the light from the
main light, but it's a much more of a
traditional portrait.
Now you control how much fill there is
in a portrait and the more fill you have,
the more soft the picture is going to
look, the more traditional the portrait
is going to look. If you take all that
fill away,
you're gonna be left with very harsh and
dramatic lighting. And it's entirely up
to you
the effect that you want to go for. With
no fill you get these kind of like deep
and intense portraits. And if you have
plenty of fill, you get a softer mood, a
lighter mood. Now let's add in a third
light which is the hair light. The hair
light is particularly important for
subjects that have dark hair, like
Chelsea.
If you have somebody with light hair or
white hair like me, you might
find it quickly becomes way too bright
and looks a little blown out. So i'll
turn on that hair light and take another
picture of Chelsea.
The hair light is typically
positioned behind and above the
subject, but pointing down at them.
You'll see behind me that the hair light
has a snoot on it.
The snoot helps to focus the light
beam and it just basically prevents the
light from spilling everywhere else in
the picture and potentially adding in
some unwanted light. So the fourth light
in this set is the background light. On
these pictures so far, the background has
been completely black and maybe that's
the effect you want to go for. But if
you're working with a white backdrop,
if you don't have a light on its going to turn out grey. Throw in that background light
and it's going to become bright white. With
a black backdrop like this, when I turn
on the background light it's going to go
from completely black to gray
.Typically the background light is
pointed behind the subjects head and if
you're working in a low-key environment
like I am, you might put a grid on it to
prevent the light from spilling
everywhere else. So I'll go turn on that
background light and we'll take another
shot.
I set up that background light to illuminate a spot right behind
Chelsea's head. This makes the background
more interesting instead of just being a
solid color. To make sure that it shows
up in only a single spotlight, I put a
grid on the strobe. The grid blocks
any light that's headed out at any kind
of an angle. Only light that's headed
straight through the grid will show up
on the backdrop.
You can use grids with different density
cells to control just how much the
backdrop spreads.
Now, I told you this would be a four light
shoot and I'm going to throw a fifth
light in there, a kicker light.
I just attached a flash to a light stand
because I don't happen to have a fifth
light. So I will put this behind Chelsea
and show you what an extra kicker light
can do.
-Kick her, do you really think that's appropriate? -{laughing}
You can see that kicker light is helping
to separate Chelsea from the background
further by illuminating the hair on the
camera left side of her face.
Some of the light is also falling onto
her face and helping to accentuate her
features a little bit.
Now you don't need five lights for every
portrait that you do. Often you can just
put somebody next to the window and that
window would be your main light. And then
hold up a reflector and that will be
your fill light. You might not need any
background light or any hair light at
all. But I do want you to be familiar
with the different types of light.
If you like this video I hope you'll
click like and subscribe down below to
see more.
And of course six more hours of video
just like this in Stunning Digital
Photography, and that number is always
growing because we're always improving the
content. We're keeping up to date as
software and photographic techniques
change and we're always adding new videos,
most of which never go on youtube, it
just goes straight into the book. You can
buy directly from us at northrup.photo or of course you can go to
Amazon or just about any other book
store.
Thanks so much