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This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

So now you know a little bit about the science of light, about the camera and lights needed, and how to make them work together. We’ll wrap up all this not-as-much-fun stuff with a quick discussion of the accessories you’ll want to consider in order to make different styles of portraits. Then the next article will be on to the actually-is-fun stuff: actually setting up portraits and taking some pictures!

Backgrounds
If you plan to do any studio portraits, some kind of background will be needed. This can be as simple as a wall, or as complex as large sheets of hand painted muslin fabric held up by a ceiling mounted support system.

Here’s my advice if you’re just starting out. Go down to Walmart and get yourself a black sheet and a white sheet. Get the cheap stuff, low thread count is good. This way you’ll at least be able to do low key and high key portraits (we’ll be covering these soon). If you’re Mr. Moneybags, you can shell out an extra five bucks and get a few more sheets in varying colors. Now you have several backgrounds to play with. Then it’s just a matter of being creative with how to hang them up. When I started out, I used to pin the sheets to a wall in my living room with thumb tacks. Worked great.

If you want extra flexibility for low cost (and you already have an extra flash), get a gray sheet (the white one works too) and use various colored gels on a flash pointed at the background. This way the one piece of fabric has numerous possibilities.

Once you’re comfortable with the process and you find you like studio photography, you’ll find yourself springing for larger muslin backgrounds and a background support system. I get my backgrounds from Amvona.com for a very reasonable price, somewhere around $50 each. If you check eBay you can also find backgrounds. I also got my background support system from Amvona for around $80. It breaks down and is portable, so it’s no big deal to take it to a client session.

Light Modifiers
You learned in The Laws of Light that apparent light size affects how soft the light looks on your subject. So how do you change the light size? Easy, with modifiers. You’ve seen these before, probably umbrellas. But there are a few others you may not have heard of.

Umbrellas - Umbrellas are a great way to increase the size of your light. They collapse and open quickly and easily. They come in several sizes and varieties, with white linings, silver linings, and semi-transparent (shoot through). The low cost of umbrellas is an attractive feature.

Softboxes - Available in various shapes and sizes, the light from a softbox is typically softer than that of an umbrella due to multiple diffusion layers inside. Softboxes have the added benefit that you can put them really close to your subject to decrease the light spilling onto the background without any fears of spearing them with the rod in the center like an umbrella. Some softboxes are a bit of a pain to set up, with several pieces to put together. Others open like an umbrella. The downside to a square softbox is that the catch light in your subject’s eyes is square and not round. Luckily, some more expensive softboxes have an octagonal shape.

Brolly boxes - This is a hybrid between an umbrella and a softbox. It’s simply an umbrella with a piece of diffusion material in the front instead of being open. These provide nice soft lighting while maintaining quick setup and low cost. I use a brolly box more than umbrellas or softboxes because of their quality look and ease of use.

Reflectors - These are simply panels of varying sizes with reflective material on them that you use to bounce light. They’re a great way to get another light in the studio if you’re short another strobe. They’re also great when trying to shoot portraits with natural light. The best part is, they come in a few colors to suit your needs, such as white, silver, gold, and sunshine. To start out and get a small reflector on the cheap, try gluing or taping some aluminum foil to a large piece of cardboard. It makes a great reflector in a pinch.

Scrims - These are semi-transparent panels (like reflectors) made of a diffusion material. They are used to diffuse and soften light on a subject. For example, you could make harsh sunlight look nice and soft on someone’s face by simply putting a scrim between the sun and the subject. The same goes for a strobe, you could easily shoot the strobe through a scrim to act as a big softbox. Many reflector panel sets include a scrim. For example, a set I have includes a scrim, and white, black, silver, and gold surfaces.

Now that you know about a few of the light modifiers out there, which should you choose? No one modifier is best, but if it were me, I’d start out with a simple umbrella. They’re cheap and easy to use, which means you’ll be more inclined to use it while you’re learning.

Connecting modifiers to your flash - Most studio strobes have a built in hole for the shaft of an umbrella. And softboxes usually fit specific strobes. But what if you’re using a battery powered shoe mount flash? For that, you simply need one piece of equipment: a multiclamp. It sits on a light stand, and your shoe mount flash sits on top of the bracket. There’s a hole in it for an umbrella. For about $17 you’re in business!

That’s it, next time we’ll start shooting. So get all your equipment together and start getting familiar with it. We’re about to start having some fun!

Resources

• Strobist’s David Hobby talks about the multiclamp
• Product information on the multiclamp from Photoflex
• Sublime Light Forums