Transcription
Let's work through the five primary lighting patterns when it comes to portraiture. We're going to talk short lighting, broad lighting, and to make this video unique, we're also going to talk about the storytelling or the purpose behind each of these lighting patterns. Let's get into it.
What's up, friends? My name is Pi, welcome to the studio. It is our first video in 2024, so fist bump! Welcome back to another MagMod tutorial. This is my friend Ki. We will link her up so you all can give her a follow. I think you're familiar with her by now, of course. Today, we have Kiara in a bodysuit, and the reason why is I want you all to be able to compare exactly what different lighting patterns are doing, not only over the face but also over the body.
In this video, we're going be working through basically flat light. We're going to go to butterfly or paramount lighting. We're going to talk loop, Rembrandt, as well as split lighting. We're also going to talk about short versus broad lighting, and we're going to go through the purposes of each. And let's get straight into this because we have quite a bit to talk about.
So over over here on our camera, we have the Canon R5 with a 70-200. Use any camera you'd like. I have it paired with a Profoto remote and the B10 up there. Again, use any light that you like. And of course, for the modifier, we're using the MagMod Pro 42 Octa. In front of it, I'm just using the standard uh scrim or the standard diffusion panel. Okay, so this is placed onto a stand that we can roll around to get to our different lighting patterns. And we're going to start with just this straight shot right here. This is going to be our flat light setup. So let's go right to the camera. Kiara, I'm going to have you hold a pose that we can basically keep throughout each of these shots for comparison purposes. And that's, that's perfect. Okay, so we're at 1200, F4, and ISO 100. And this is our flat light shot.
So flat or direct lighting. This is the lighting pattern that's created whenever your light source is coming from the same angle as your lens. Okay, it doesn't matter whether it's off-camera like we have here or an on-camera flash, that is considered direct light or flat lighting. Okay, a lot of photographers look at this and they go, I don't like flat lighting, I don't like direct lighting. It doesn't look very interesting, or it looks like flash, or I want shadow. And so they think of it as something that's wrong. When in reality, it's kind of beautiful. It has a lot of purpose behind it. See, flat light might lack shadow and dimension, but that's exactly what makes it flattering. Okay, so think flat equals flattering, right? What happens with flat light is the light goes directly into the face and body, and it doesn't leave room for shadow. That also means that the lines and any blemishes on the face are filled as well. They're filled with light. So we tend to get a very flattering look when we use flat or direct light sources. This is why it's a fantastic and commonly used lighting pattern within the world of fashion and beauty. All of that.
Moving on, we have butterfly or paramount lighting. Now, this is very similar, actually, to that flat lighting setup that we started with. All we've done is we've pushed the light a bit closer and then raised it up. So it's basically coming from still a flat angle, which is going to fill most the shadow on the face, but it's coming from a higher angle. And kind of a fun little fact here, it's called a butterfly light for, well, a main reason, which is the shadow that it's going to create underneath the nose. But it's also called a paramount light. It got that nickname because the studio Paramount actually used to use this lighting pattern to basically photograph all their celebrity headshots. So it kind of got the nickname Paramount lighting. I don't know, I think it's a fun fact. Is it a fun fact?
All right, let's take a shot here and see what it looks like. The cool thing about this lighting pattern is it's kind of an in-between. I love paramount lighting because it's still directional, it gives a shadow, but it's also very flattering. Comparing flat to butterfly lighting, it's not fully directional like we're going to get to in a second, but it does create some shadow. It's also still a direct form of light, so it fills in a lot of those features on the face. It makes for a very flattering light as well. This is one of my favorite lighting patterns when it comes to studio portraits. I love it.
Our third lighting pattern is the loop pattern. Okay, so this is where we've brought the flash head and the modifier down a bit, and we've now pushed it off angle. So we're maybe 45 degrees off angle to the camera. And let's come back to this. This is where we're going to start to create shape and shadow in the body as well as in the face. Now, comparing loop to butterfly lighting, we start seeing a bit more drama. See that butterfly or paramount light? It was only creating shadow kind of down on the body, but for the most part, it was still a direct or flat lighting angle, right? But now with loop lighting, we start pushing the light off center, and this creates a shadow on one side of the face as well as one side of the body. And this starts to make these types of lighting patterns very useful when we want a bit more shape, we want a little bit more drama in the image. So more shadow equals more drama.
Now, I'll be honest, I don't typically use the loop pattern that much because it's kind of the baby stepbrother to the Rembrandt lighting pattern, which is my favorite look, and that's what we're going to go to next. So let's go right to Rembrandt. And all you're going to do to get there is basically just move the light a little bit further and deeper into your scene. What we're really looking for when we want a Rembrandt light pattern is we want to be able to look from the light and see the opposite side of the cheek. Okay, so I'm looking to basically push this maybe a little bit more to the right side and get it a little more off-axis. You can also control the lighting pattern as well with the direction of the chin. We're going to talk about that in just a moment as well, but let's go ahead and start right here and let's get to that Rembrandt light pattern.
Okay, so let's put up the loop and the Rembrandt side by side. You'll see exactly what I mean. I feel like loop doesn't quite get me to that dramatic effect that I want to have, whereas the Rembrandt lighting pattern is perfect. We get the perfect amount of shadow and shape on the body. We get this beautiful light pattern on the face. And it's classically kind of known as Rembrandt lighting because the painter Rembrandt made it very famous when he would always paint a little highlight under the eye on the shadow side of the face. So that's what gave it the, the nickname Rembrandt lighting. Okay, this is by far my favorite dramatic light setup, and it's useful anytime you want to create a bit more drama, a bit more depth in a scene, when you want to shape and kind of carve out your portrait or your subject. So this is kind of my go-to for them.
The last lighting pattern I want to walk through is going to be split lighting. But while we're here, this is the perfect time to talk about like a little bit of a, an in-between lighting pattern or technique. You use it's short versus broad lighting. Whenever you hear a photographer use that term like, I want to short light my subject, they're talking about the direction of the face relating to your light source. Okay, so whenever the face is kind of at an angle, like if I move your chin towards this light, Kiara, this is known as short lighting. So from the camera's angle, this side of the face becomes the shorter light side of the face, right? It's more narrow in the lens. So for example, Kiara, go ahead and go back to your same pose, but then bring the chin off to that side. There you go. So this would be short lighting because the light is coming from the short side of the face. And in fact, we can even, with her chin kind of off to this angle, we can actually push the light a little bit deeper and still get a good light wrap across the face, right?
Broad lighting is when the chin goes, goes away from the light source. Now, what's happening is this would be the short side of the face based on the camera's position. This is the broad side of the face, and what we're doing is we're lighting the broad side of the face here. So short versus broad lighting. They're useful in a number of ways. In general, if you light from the broad side of the face, it's going to make the face look wider. So if you have a subject that's very lean and they have maybe a narrow, very narrow face, and you want to kind of add a bit of strength and widening out the face a bit, then you would actually broad light them. If you want to slenderize your subject, if you want to light in kind of a more flattering way that makes you look a little more lean, then you'd light from the short side of the face because the shadow is what's going to create that illusion, right? So short versus broad lighting, usually when it comes to portraiture, the default is short lighting because it's generally going to make your subject look leaner and it's going to be a little more flattering. And that's typically what most of us are, are kind of looking for in our photos, except for maybe Kiara because she's completely jacked. But for me, yeah, I want to look leaner.
Now let's go to our last lighting pattern. This is split lighting. So split lighting is created when our light comes directly perpendicular to our subject. So if this is Kiara looking right into the lens, you can see the light is basically placed directly to her right. And what it's going to do is it's going to create a split in both the face and in the body. So let's go ahead and take that same shot. Okay, that's exactly what we see here. Now, split lighting, again, there's nothing wrong with this. It's just creating more drama, right? The more shadow, the more drama we're creating an image, and we want to think from a storytelling standpoint if that's the way that we want to go, right? Like in this kind of a scene, split lighting actually kind of looks pretty dope. In fact, if I bring Kiara's face just over to this side, so again, we're short lighting, watch this. The split light can actually work really nicely. We almost get a Rembrandt lighting pattern on Kiara's face, and you get this really cool shape and dimension in the body, right? This works because she's dressed in this sort of, you know, edgy outfit. It's a bodysuit. It kind of matches the vibe and everything that she has. But would we want to use like a split lighting setup for say, wedding portraits? Probably not. With a bride who's dressed in a very soft and elegant wedding dress, I'm not looking usually to create a very dramatic look. I'm actually looking back towards flat or maybe a paramount light setup for those types of images. I want something that's a bit more flattering, a little more soft. So there's nothing wrong with split lighting. It's just more drama. Use this when you want to create more impact, and a lot of editorial photographers use this incredibly well. Just remember, I would say is whenever you're split lighting, really watch the shadow on the other side of the face. Make sure that you fill that shadow to get enough depth there. But if you want to create edgy, really dramatic kind of portraits, this is your go-to.
One last tip before we wrap. With any of these lighting patterns, I want to just point out one thing in general. We want to make our light come a little bit top down. So I'm usually going to place that light source about a foot above my subject and kind of slightly angled down. This kind of emulates a natural light direction. We expect light to kind of be coming top down because that's where the sun is in our lives, right? Most of the light in our lives, whether it's ceiling, whether it's around us, it's usually coming top down. So we can create very unnatural shadows by lighting directly at our subject or at a lower angle versus our subject. So in any position, just remember that kind of a general rule about one foot above the subject's head is good. Um, you can of course adjust for stylistic purposes, but that's a good sort of general rule to get you guys going.
That's it for us. Good job. First video of the new year. We're going to link up all the gear that we use in the description of this video. We would of course love it for you guys to subscribe to the MagMod channel. And if you guys dig videos like this and you want to keep me and Ki coming back, comment below. That tells MagMod and the entire crew that we're doing a good job and that you guys are actually enjoying the videos. If you have any ideas, any thoughts, things that you want to see in future videos, let us know as well. We read the comments. And last thing, we have a completely free downloadable lighting guide that we've created with MagMod. And, uh, yeah, it has all sorts of different lighting patterns. It's a fantastic tool. It's free to download. We'll put it in the description. And one more thing, sorry, there's, there's, there's another one. Join the community. MagMod has an incredible community on Facebook, and it's a great place to share your images, ask for feedback, all of that. That's it. Now I'm done. You done? Peace.