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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.

Split lighting.
Clicky for larger

We continue our series on basic lighting setups with split lighting. Split lighting is simply lighting half of the subject’s face, while leaving the other half in complete shadow. This form of lighting creates a sense of drama in a portrait and really adds a little variety to a portfolio of images. While this isn’t my favorite of lighting setups, I do break it out from time to time to see what I’ll get. You can see here that even with a baby, you can create quite a mood with this type of lighting.

The image at left is another of my (then five month old) son. If you read the last section in this series on Profile Lighting, I told you that I caught my son in profile by mistake. This split lit shot was actually the shot I was going for when his little bobble head swung off in one direction to pay attention to God knows what, probably the cat.

Here’s how to set up a split lit shot.

How To Do It

One of the great things about this setup is that you really only need one light to create a high quality, dramatic portrait. Position this key light to one side of your subject so that it’s exactly 90 degrees to one side. Take a look at the diagram below (click for a larger version) to see where to position the key light. You can put a light modifier on this light if you want to, but this technique works equally well with a soft or a hard light source.

Split lighting setup
Click to enlarge

With the modeling light on or by taking a few frames, make sure that the line between light and dark runs directly down the center of your model’s face, right down the tip of the nose. The model should be looking directly at the camera. And that’s it, you’ve created a split lit portrait!

You may decide now to spice up the shot with a hair light. Go right ahead, position one one the same side as the key light but closer to the background. This will create some separation between the model and the background.

Want to throw another light into the mix? Try putting a light behind the model pointing into the background. The only downside to this though is that the more you light up the shot, the more you lessen the drama of the dark, moody image. I personally prefer to leave out the background light.

Tips

• Remember, because you want the shadow side of the face to be in complete (or near complete) shadow, don’t add any lights or reflectors to the shadow side to fill in. You want lots of contrast for this type of portrait. Now you may be saying, “Hey, Tim, but I can see your son’s face on the shadow side! What gives?” The little bit of light you see on the shadow side is actually the key light reflecting off the wall on the opposite side of the room. To eliminate this, either buy a bigger house than mine (lucky dog!), or put a flag (some black fabric) on the shadow side to soak up the light and keep it from being reflected. I personally don’t mind the tiny bit of reflection. If you also like a little fill, who am I to judge? Go for it!
• This setup lends itself well to those who don’t own any backgrounds. The photo in this article was taken without a background. If you block the light from spilling toward the background, you can render what’s behind the subject totally black. I put a recliner next to the strobe so that it acted as a big barn door. There was actually a little clutter behind my son in this shot, though you’d never know it.

So what do you think, ready to try this one out for yourself? Get out and try some split lit portraits the next time you break out the camera. Then post your results to the Sublime Light Flickr photo pool so we can all see.