Still Photography Lighting Techniques

Light Types

• Choosing lights for your still photo setups involves picking from two primary light types, tungsten and strobes, each with their specific advantages and disadvantages. Expect to spend double on light housings if you mix lighting types since each light type requires its own housing.

Tungsten Bulbs

• Tungsten bulbs come in two types, photo-floods and quartzes. Using tungsten bulbs allows you to build a quality lighting system with low upfront costs. While less expensive than strobes, you'll have to replace the bulbs more often since tungsten bulbs have significantly shorter life spans. Photo-flood bulbs tend to last less than six hours, while quartz photo bulbs last between 25 and 30 hours. Along with the short lifespan, photo-flood bulbs lose color temperature, which is the actual colors seen by the light, shifting with time so that what might begin as a bulb simulating the colors seen by light at sunrise becomes a bulb simulating those seen by candlelight. They also lose light intensity the longer they're used, which will result in a slight orange tinting in your photos over time.

  You'll have to use either tungsten balanced film or color correcting filters with your tungsten bulbs to make up for the color problems caused by the tungsten's tendency to shift colors subtly with use, lighting progressive photos of a session slightly differently over the session's length. Using tungsten in small or enclosed spaces could be a problem as well because of the large amount of heat they generate.

Strobe Bulbs

• Strobe bulbs are a bit more expensive than tungsten, but they do away with many of the heating problems because of their flash nature. Strobe lighting will last between 50,000 and 100,000 flashes, and the only heat results from the modeling lights you might be using to control the lighting and shadows of your scene's setup. When using strobe bulbs make certain your modeling lights are balanced to the power settings of your bulb so that you get a picture in keeping with what you're seeing of the subject model. The strobe is made to work within a certain level of light, unbalance the strobe and the modeling lights and you'll unbalance the color temperature of the photo causing a blue or orange-red tint to the picture taken.

Number of Lights

• A properly placed light source will help you get the photo you're aiming for, and even a single light will give you greater control over the setting than no light at all. You should use at least one reflector for lighting your model. Reflectors come in a variety of sizes and coverings, but even a piece of white cardboard makes for adequate reflection to provide space fill light, which eliminates most shaded surfaces lighting the entire figure, in a pinch. Adding lights gives you more control over everything from enhancing the subject from the background to controlling shadows.

  For multiple lighting situations, each light provides a specific function. Use key lights to provide primary lighting for your subject.The key light highlights your subject's form and dimension, contrasting the subject against the background of the photo. For softening the shadows created by your key light, a fill light should be used. To make your subject stand out from the background, add a hair light, which is placed behind your subject to provide back lighting that will light your subject from the rear. You should aim hair lights at the hair to provide increased contrast to hair and facial features. Each additional light will add complexity to the photo, along with complexity to the setup.

Lighting Position

• When using multiple lights you will get the best results if the lights are placed in the correct positions. The closer you place your lights to the subject the harsher the lighting will be. Place your lights no closer than two or three feet away from the subject. Placement of lights further away provides a softer, more diffused lighting effect.