Portrait Basics – In-class Portrait Shoot

Today we used 3 “lights” to create a standard 3-point portrait lighting. They are the background light, the main light, and the reflector. We began with the main light, also known as the key, by pointing it at our subject to create a  a triangle of light on the darker side of the face. You can use this lighting to create a more mysterious look to your subject. The main light is  pointed at the subject. The next light we used was the fill light, which is the reflector. This type of lighting adds light to the shadow or unlit side of the face. The closer we moved the reflector to the subject, the brighter the fill showed. The last light we used was background lighting. You use background lighting to light the background to separate the the foreground (subject) from the background. This method gives a sense of depth in photographs.