Having some extra lighting set up in your repertory can help prepare you for any type of shooting scenario. This time around we’re going to be taking look at where in Rembrandt lighting, Beauty lighting, Cameo lighting, and filling in from the key side. I’m Tom Skowronski and this is lighting set up.
This lighting set up is defined by the triangle you can see under Julie’s right eye. It’s a very high contrast lighting scheme that works under how many shadows you use to cover someone’s face. You’re looking it at about 25% of the face is going to end up with and that’s a 25% we want to focus on. Now because we’re using a spotlight for this effect in this lighting set up, you’ll notice that a lot of the areas of the shadows around tend to draw the viewer in because you want to see where the light is. That’s where you eye get strong to. This was very popular in the film more days and that’s something that you even use now.
The Rembrandt lighting set up takes about three steps. Step number one is going to be to take a spotlight and set it about 45 degrees and accordance with the cameras position. Step number two, is going to be to raise that light about three or four feet above the subjects head therefore they’ll break down some nice hard shadows and step number three would be to add the use of a reflector to create some nice diffuse soft the light just in case those shadows are a little bit too harsh and we can’t make out anything in our shot.
Step number three in this process involves the use of a reflector. What we’re going to do is catch the light from the spotlight and bring down the intensity a bit that’s on Julie’s face. You can see she still has the triangle there but the shadows are a little bit less harsh. The big focus of beauty lighting is the hide sort of imperfections on the face while keeping the subject lit just well enough so they are in a bunch of shadows over powering the face. This technique is commonly use in photo spread because of how it hides imperfections in the skin. You can hardly notice Julies face tattoos and you can see that she’s very naturally but it’s not harsh, it’s a very low contrast type of light. Let’s not over powering we’re not getting a lot of very vicious shadows or anything like that. As you can see we have two light set up for this technique? We’re going to use a light at front that’s very soft and it can be diffuse if you guys have a powerful light you just want to set it back. We’re going to want to make sure that our lights are about eye level with the subject or about the same height as our camera and the reason for this is so we get a nice natural light and also so that the backlight when we get that in the place it doesn’t over power and spill through. We’re going to want a nice rim of light on top of the head so it’s a more angelic.
The second light that we have set up in this scene is going to be the backlight. As you guys can see this backlight rest at about four or five feet away from our subject and it’s about two or three feet higher. This is what gives us at that nice kind of ream light that just going to hit the top of her head and add that kind of halo. This is just the basic set up that; we’re using just two lights. You can actually use a lot more light. You just have to pay attention to make you sure those lights are very soft so you don’t over catch any shadow along the subjects there.
Cameo lighting is a technique that centers around the use of the spot light position above the subject that shines down directly on top of them giving them an angelic vibe as if God is shining down. This should be a harsh lighting scheme. The first thing that we’re going to do is set up our lights to hang downwards and at a very high angle you’re going to position them at about six or seven feet above the subject. Therefore when the lights come down they’re going to give that halo effect and they aren’t going to be very harsh so you’re going to hit your subject very hard and it’s really going to light up the whole area. The reason we don’t use soft light for this instance is because it’s a lot harder to get somebody to stand out.
The key to this set up is a bit of light that’s powerful enough they can beam down all of that illumination but at the same time isn’t so powerful that it wash out your subject entirely. The key elements to this lighting set is to keep the stand very close to the subjects body and raise it about three or four feet higher than her head.
Filling in from the key side is great for lighting that reflects some more natural outdoor environment reminiscent of a nice cloudy day. Filling in from the key side requires taking the fill light and the key light and lighting from both the same side. The reason this works is because the light that comes from the fill spills over and actually wraps around the subject face therefore creating a much more natural and much more flattering type of lighting. The first step in this process were also on taking both your key and your fill light and moving them 45 degrees from the position of the camera.
The next step in our process is going to be to set up our backlight at about two feet above our subjects head and about four or five feet away from the subject. The idea here is to make sure that the light that wraps around the subjects face doesn’t create too many shadows. The last part of the process is to check your LCD screen and make sure that you’re not receiving too many shadows along the face and that indeed does look very natural. The key to understanding a lot of this lighting set up is patient. It’s going to take quite a bit of trial and error and quite a bit of experimentation in already to get each and every scenario down perfectly just for you.
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