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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.

45 degree lighting is one of the most basic types of lighting setup in portraiture. It is also the foundation for many other types of lighting. Once you’ve learned this crucial setup and mastered it’s uses, more complex lighting arrangements will be much more fruitful.

45 degree lighting is the most common type for portrait work. You’ve surely seen it before. Odds are you’ve even been the subject of a 45 degree lighting portrait, at least if you ever had a high school yearbook picture taken.

The Key Light

This style of lighting revolves around one light, the 45 degree key light. You may not have heard this term before, and this is the first mention of it in this series. The key light is simply the dominant light in a photo that is providing the driving force for the look. For 45 degree lighting, the key light is placed 45 degrees to the subject’s face and slightly high. You can use other accent lights to your hearts content: background, fill, hair, but the main thing to remember is to keep the key light at 45 degrees to the subject’s face. And here’s the thing that gets most newbies: if you move the subject, even turning his or her head, you have to reposition the light so that it’s back to 45 degrees.

Here’s a simple diagram of what the setup looks like from above (gotta love my late night drawing skills!):

The reason that 45 degree lighting is so important is that it’s the perfect angle to create modeling on the human form. The term modeling refers to showing three dimensionality through the use of light. When you have light coming from where the camera is, that three dimensionality is lost because shadows aren’t seen on the face. Put the light off the camera and you get shadows, which gives you 3D, and 45 degrees is the perfect angle to maximize this effect.

Making It Pop

While you can certainly produce a beautiful portrait with just a single key light, they can often lack that extra pizazz that sets them apart. To get that, you just need to add a little extra light. You can add whichever lights work for you, so experiment to see what you like. If you don’t have extra lights, reflectors can be substituted in some cases.

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Fill light - This light is used to lighten the shadows that the key light doesn’t reach. This light shouldn’t be evident in the final photo, as it just provides a wash of light over the subject. Use a large light source such as a big umbrella or softbox positioned behind the camera. If you use it, this will be the first light you want to set up. Dial the light down so that it’s about one to one and a half stops below the key light. Since you probably don’t have a light meter, use your camera to meter the light to get it where you want it until you’ve learned your equipment well enough to do it by feel.

Hair light - This light provides a little separation between the subject and the background, and enhances the shine of the hair. Position this light on the same side of the subject as the key light and behind at a 45 degree angle. Your power setting on this light will depend on the subject’s hair color, as dark hair will need more light. Start with the light set the same as the key light and go from there. Attach a snoot or honeycomb to the front of the light if you have one to control the spread of the light.

Background light - The background light creates a space between the subject and background. Put the light on a stand behind the subject, pointing at the background right around the subject’s shoulders. This will create a soft circle of light behind the subject and draw attention to the face. Power will depend on the color and lightness of the background, so start with the same power setting as the key light and go from there.

Tips

• Position the camera at the subject’s chest height.
• Make sure you get a catch light in the subject’s eyes from the key light.
• When setting up lighting, turn off all other lights and focus on one at a time.

Taking These Lessons Anywhere

The photo at the beginning of this article was taken of my son while getting a bath in my parents’ kitchen sink. While this is not a particularly special picture, I included it to demonstrate a couple of points.

• You don’t need to be in a studio to use good lighting principles. Candid photos benefit from good lighting too.
• You don’t need to have a complicated lighting setup to have good lighting. The picture above was taken with the flash mounted on the camera. The flash was pointed toward the wall at left and bounced on to my son. It’s just like playing pool when you bank a ball off one side. Just think about where on the wall the light should be pointed so that when it bounces it will hit the subject at 45 degrees.