STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHY ONE POINT LIGHTING

This post is focussed on our studio lighting photoshoot using a single light to capture images.

Single point lighting or “one point lighting”, is the technique of carrying out a photoshoot within a studio with only a single source of light, for example large lamps, spotlights or torches.

It enables reflective lighting techniques, and it sometimes, can be used to focus a viewers attention to a particular aspect of a photograph or subject in the photograph, or it can be used to create shadows when used correctly that add additional depth of field and conceptual features to an image.

Contact sheet of images:

 

From this contact sheet I picked out my favourite two images from the shoot and edited them in Adobe Photoshop.

My final edited images from the single point lighting shoot:

I chose to edit both of these images because of the sharpness, diversity in model actions, contrast differences, brightness differences and the similarity in the position of the single light and the shadows on the models’ face.

The camera was using a high ISO of around 800 and an above average aperture on the first photo, and using a lower ISO of around 600 and a smaller aperture on the second.

The shutter speed for the first photo was slightly faster than the second creating the darkened effect with only the single light from the side creating the shiny parts that give the image its ‘definition’.

The depth of field in both images is shown through the shadows created by the side-lighting however, this only shows depth of field on the model themselves.

Alex looking “into the light”

“Seriously Serious”