How to Back Light Model for Photo Shoot

Video Transcript

"Hi again, Rob Mitchell for expert village. We're moving on now. We have our key light set up. We have our reflector here for fill. We just did the hair light on Nicole creating a beautiful lighting on her shoulders as well as in her hair. We're introducing a third light this time and we're going to do a background light. Obviously this one will go behind the model. We want to make sure that you can't see the light. We'll put it down low behind Nicole and we'll shine it up on the background and see what effect that gives us. Okay now, we've placed the light exactly behind Nicole, right in the center and we're shining it against the background. Let me turn it on here and you can see the effect that we're getting. There we are. Now you see this round hot spot that the light creates. I like to place that just over her shoulder so it comes across the shoulders. See what happens. We can bring it right up here and it doesn't really look too attractive so I lower it just so that we get a nice highlight, a nice arc right over the shoulders. You can see what's happening now, we've added a hair light, a fill reflector, the key light, and a background light. Here's another little trick that you can try. We're taking our background light and we're turning it off the background and we're pointing right towards Nicole. You can see how it's highlighting just a little bit of light here creating just a little more depth, a little bit more definition. One final little trick when you're using a background light, you may want to throw some color in there. Maybe we're just a little bit tired of that white light. I just got a simple blue gel that I'm going to put in the background here. We'll tape it to the light, just tape it right across the light here and you can see how things have changed once again. We've added a little bit more drama. One could use red lights if we're using Christmas cards, any different color lights you can, just make sure that it doesn't conflict with what your model is wearing."