Portrait Lighting Styles -Lighting Ratios

Another of my ‘why not try this at home’ posts given that most of us are in lockdown. You’ve got me (un retouched – I could make myself look like George Clooney but it would take days of Photoshop work and life’s too short) as no-one in our house is keen on being photographed because it’s been weeks since any of us saw a hairdresser. This shot is straight out of camera. It’s in black and white so you can see the light pattern more clearly.

I placed two lights at 45 degrees either side of me and set each to different power outputs.  The key, or main, light on camera left was set to the correct exposure and the power of the fill light on camera right was set so that eight times less light was emitted. Hence the 8:1 ratio. You can see that I used two lights because there are two catchlights (reflections of the light sources) in both eyes.   You can also see that more light is falling on the right side of my face than the left.

Camera settings were 200 ISO,  f8 at 1/125 second with the power of the key light metered first and the fill light adjusted to suit.   Have fun…

If you’d like any free advice with indoor photography (given that this is where most of us are spending most of our time at the moment) message me, give me a ring or drop me an email; I’d be happy to help.

Antony