Why do we use studio lighting?

It improves the quality of your photos and can offer some creative assistance that can set your final product apart from others. They are a common sight in studios, and the variety of lights tell every one of them has a specific use for different kinds of photography. Using professional lighting equipment can give your photos a professional look that sets them apart from the rest. Also, It sets the mood, provides direction, shows dimension and texture, and creates the darkest shadows.

What is the fill lighting?

A fill light is responsible for exposing the details of a subject that fall in the shadows of the key light. It is the secondary light in the traditional 3 point lighting setup. The fill light is typically positioned opposite of the key light to literally fill in the shadows that the key light creates.

Butterfly Lighting

Butterfly lighting is a technique where the light source is placed directly above and slightly in front of the subject’s face, creating a small butterfly-shaped shadow under the nose. It can make the subject look thinner and their eyes appear larger. A butterfly lighting effect refers to the setup and not to the quality of light; it can be soft or hard light depending on the effect you want. This is one point lighting as only one light is used.

These are prime examples of butterfly lighting images.

This is the set up:

My take at butterfly lighting:

For these images, I think I did well getting the lighting in the right places making a butterfly effect under the nose and defining the cheek bones.

Rembrandt lighting

Rembrandt was known for his history paintings and portraits commissioned by patrons, but he also pushed forward the genre of self-portraiture. The Dutch Master didn’t let thoughts of anatomy override him, nor did he micromanage his strokes. Rembrandt made a stroke abstractly — as if he were not painting forms at all. As a result, the viewer sees the paint articulating as much information as possible. Because of this, Rembrandt’s work is very subtle.

Rembrandt lighting is a technique utilizing one light and one reflector or two separate lights. It’s a popular technique because it creates images that look both dramatic yet natural. Rembrandt made the pictures more tense and dramatic with sharp contrasts between light and dark. In portraiture, the eyes of your subject are mostly always the main point of focus in the image. The triangle of light, placed just below the eye on the shadow side of the face, will increase the emphasis and the viewer really will be ‘drawn in’ to your image.

This is the set up:

This is a professional picture using Rembrandt lighting.

As you can see, just below the eye, is a triangle shape. That is key in this style of lighting.

My take at Rembrandt lighting:

For this lighting technique, I found it a bit more difficult to get the lighting in the right place. It took several attempts, however i got there in the end.

Chiaroscuro lighting

Chiaroscuro is a lighting technique that utilises a low lighting setup to achieve contrast between the subject and a dark background. It emphasises and illuminate important figures in a painting or drawing. Chiaroscuro using one key light and a variation using a reflector that reflects light from the key light back onto the sitter. The term chiaroscuro stems from the Italian words chiaro “clear” or “bright” and oscuro “obscure” or “dark”, and refers to the arrangement of light and shade in a work of art.

This is the set up:

These are professional pictures using the Chiaroscuro lighting technique:

One side of the models face, will always remain darker with more shadows.

My take at Chiaroscuro lighting:

I liked this lighting technique the most as in my opinion it was the easiest. I like how one side of the face is light, and the other half is dark.

Three Point lighting

Three-point lighting is the standard form of professional lighting in video production and still photography. It involves using three light sources placed in three different positions. I used a light positioned in front of the subject, a light slightly behind the subject, and a reflector positioned just in front but placed to the side of the subject.

1 point lighting only uses 1 light source (usually a key light), this could be a light facing someone in a studio, or if someone is outside, the light source would be the sun. It is important as without any lighting you won’t be able to see anything and the photo would just be darkness.

2 point lighting commonly uses 2 light sources or a light and a reflector. It is usually placed at a 45 degree angle from the subject and usually uses a main light and a fill light.

Selected images

Green=good photos.

Yellow=okay photos.

I then edited my top 5 photos.

Edited photos

Before

After

Analysis- This is my favourite environmental portrait picture. The lighting compliments the whole picture. I like how she has a subtle glow to her face, but not too much that it makes the picture too white. I also like how the horse is right next to her face as it really represents the environmental portrait task.

Before

After

Analysis- For this picture I lightened it up and smoothed it out. I like the the picture has a soft touch. I also like how the lighting is quite low as it sets a sombre mood.

Before

After

Analysis- This photo shows my brother discussing measurements in the kitchen. I have turned the temp down to make the reflection of the lights less bright. I then put the tint up a fraction to warm the photo up a bit. I also put the exposure up to brighten it up. I moved the contrast down to calm the colours down so it wasn’t so bright.

Before

After

Analysis- I didn’t do much to this photo, but i dragged the whites to the very left to add more detail in to the image. I also moved the blacks all the way to the right to brighten up the darker parts of the photo.

Before

After

Analysis- I put the highlights down and the shadows up to make a nice blend and contrast of the colours on her face.

On the side of each edited image, it shows how i have edited them.

Arnold Newman was born March 3, 1918 in New York City. He studied art under a scholarship at the University of Miami, from 1936 to 1938. He died in New York City on June 6, 2006. Newman was generally acknowledged as the pioneer of the environmental portrait, he is also known for his still life and abstract photography, and he is considered as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century.

Newman began his career in photography in 1938 working at chain portrait studios in Philadelphia, and immediately began working in abstract and documentary photography on his own. Newman is often credited with being the first photographer to use so-called environmental portraiture, in which the photographer places the subject in a carefully controlled setting to capture the essence of the individual’s life and work.

Newman is often known well by being the photographer who articulated and who consistently employed the genre of environmental portraiture; a well known example being his portrait of Igor.

Newman normally captured his subjects in their most familiar surroundings with representative visual elements showing their professions and personalities. Newman’s best-known images were in black and white, although he often photographed in colour. His 1946 black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky seated at a grand piano became his signature image. It shows the reality of what Igor Stravinsky does. The image is simple but shows depth and feeling towards his interests. The most important parts to this image is him, and his piano. His facial expression is serious, which could suggest how seriously he takes playing the piano. The way the piano is much bigger than him, and the fact the lid of the piano looks like a music note, may suggest how much music plays a big part in his life. Black and white represents death and life.

This picture is also in black and white. The image is focused on his face with a blurred background making his facial expressions stand out. The use of shadows could represent hidden meaning. The contrast from shadow to light show the dark and light side of human life.

Where am I taking photographs?

For my environmental portraits, I decided to photograph;

• in a field
• in my kitchen
• in my brothers room
• in my friends room
• in my nans garage
• in my nans living room
• in my nans kitchen

Who I am photographing

I decided to take photos of;

• my friend, I decided to take photos of her in her room as that’s where she spends most of her time.
• my mum, i took pictures of her in my nans kitchen making tea as that’s normal for her.
• my brother, I took pictures of him playing his play station as that’s all he does, and took pictures of him making food as hes old enough to look after himself.
• my nan, I took pictures of her reading as its what she loves to do most.
• Oil distributer, i took pictures of him as he came to fix my nans oil.

When am I conducting the shoot.

I carried out this shoot over October half term around jersey. This was best as I had lots of free time.

How are you going to produce your photos

• A camera
• Different lighting
• Different camera settings
• Props in the photos

Contact sheets of all my photos

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used as a genre of photography.

It is a shot that captures a subject at work, at home, or in another important location. Good environmental portraits will tell strong stories of their subjects. Their immediate surroundings will give the viewer insight into where these people are, what they do, and who they are.

These are some examples of environmental portraits:

As with all photographs, the main photographic components of a portrait are light, composition, and moment. This creates a good environmental portrait.

Portraits tell us about an artists intentions and what they are trying to say about the model, e.g. thoughts, feelings, or what they are known for. They tell a story, but also hide secrets.

Environmental portraits can create a short biography by incorporating a constructed or real background of the subject’s life seamlessly into the photograph as there is no significant separation between person and place. The subject and environment depend on each other for meaning.

This is a mind map I have created for ideas on what makes a good environmental portrait. Adjust your camera settings, use ambient light, use a wide-angle lens, communicate with your subject, use props naturally, and focus on the essential details.

Here is a mood board of environmental portraits.

I edited this in photoshop. I got a gallery off of the internet and pasted in to photoshop. I then pasted the pictures on to the background and changed the angle of the photo to make it look like it was sitting on the wall.

Aperture refers to the opening of a lens’s diaphragm through which light passes.

Shutter speed is the speed at which the shutter of the camera closes. 

For digital photography, ISO refers to the sensitivity of the camera’s sensor. The ISO setting is one of three elements used to control exposure; the other two are f/stop and shutter speed. ISO originally referred to the sensitivity of film.

We started off with a still life picture. We then had to analyse it looking at the technical, visual, contextual and conceptual features of this picture, really picking out each detail and referring to what it meant.

Darren Harvey-Regan is a graduate of the Royal College of Art. His work has appeared in exhibitions and publications internationally and is part of the permanent photography collection at the V & A Museum, London.

Darren Harvey-Regan’s work circles around photography with an emphasis on the medium’s relationship to language and to sculpture. He is interested in the means of transition from one form of representation to another and in the overlaps that confuse and rephrase such movements.

Harvey-Regan finds photography that photographs objects, whilst in itself being an object, interesting as a concept. He states “It’s a means of transposing material into other material, adding new meaning or thoughts in the process. I think photographing materials is a way to consider the means of creating meaning, and it’s a tactile process with which I feel involved. Touching and moving and making are my engagement with the world and my art”.

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. 

He took documentary photography both for the American documentary movement of the 1930s and for street photographers of the 1940s and 50s. Producing a body of photographs that continues to shape our understanding of the modern era. He worked in every genre and format, in black and white and in colour, but two passions were constant: literature and the printed page.

His iconic portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs – a farmer’s wife, and mother of four – whose unforgettable eyes seem to stare right through us – is one of the most firmly embedded images in American consciousness.