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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.

Short lighting
Iden Pierce Ford

Last week you learned about the most basic of lighting setups, 45 degree lighting. To quickly recap, you’re simply lighting your subject’s face at a 45 degree angle. Now we’re going to build on that idea and learn about two types of 45 degree lighting that you can use in your portraits.

Short (or Narrow) Lighting

In short lighting, a relatively small area of the face is illuminated by the key light. More of the face is in shadow. One of the benefits of using short lighting is that it makes the subject look thinner because less of the face is lit.

As you learned in 45 degree lighting, the key light is the dominant light source in a portrait, providing the driving force for the look. So with the key light set up at 45 degrees to your subject, have her turn her face toward the light. Not too much, or the light will fall straight on to her face and the effect will be lost.

Broad Lighting

Broad lighting
Iden Pierce
Ford

Broad lighting illuminates the larger portion of the face visible to the camera. The area of the face that is highlighted is now larger than the area in shadow. Because of this, the face looks slightly larger and fatter, especially when you’re doing low key portraits and the subject is really standing out against a dark background.

To accomplish broad lighting, simply do the opposite of short lighting. Have your subject turn her head away from the key light. This will expose more of the lit area of the face to the camera.

Accidents Happen

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When you’re still learning to use these lighting techniques, it’s not uncommon to mistakenly switch lighting style without even knowing it. For example, you set up your lights and pose your subject for some short lit portraits. You get into your groove and start rearranging your subject. You do some body shifts, some head tilts, and before you know it, you’ve taken a whole bunch of portraits where the subject’s face is lit broadly rather than shortly.

You didn’t even realize you did it until you look at the photos after the shoot. The only way around this is to keep your lighting setups in mind as you shoot. It’s very easy to forget these principles once you start looking through the camera.

Tips

Short lighting
nobophoto.nl

• Be careful about posing for broad lighting. If you turn the head too far away from the light, you’ll expose the ear to the camera, and it will be highlighted against the (usually) darker background. This will make it stand out.
• For a more dramatic photo, eliminate the fill light and just use the key light.
• Use short lighting to help make your subject appear thinner.
• You’ll find that most people generally prefer short lighting for portraits.

Gaining a mastery of these two simple lighting concepts is critical to becoming an accomplished portrait photographer. Once you have these two tools in your tool bag, you’ll have more control over the quality of results you get from a photo session.

Ready To Give It A Try?

The only way to learn this stuff is to get out and do it. So take some photos using these two techniques. Then post your results to the Sublime Light Flickr group so everyone can see how you’re doing. Don’t be shy, we have a great group of people.