Lighting for Portrait Photography

Video Transcript

"Hello I'm Mark Bowers from Bowers photography dot com in Utah. And we are talking about digital portrait model lighting. I'd like to show you a few examples of what we do. What we first do is try to light the mask of the face which is basically the round part of your face. You want to light the front part of the face with a portrait and you want something to create a three dimensionality on the face. The finished product is a two dimensional piece of photographic paper, but what you are trying to do is create a three dimensional image on that two dimensional paper. And so what you are using is a main light which is usually a little bit softer like a soft box or an umbrella or something that's a softer light. The next thing is you are going to want lights in the eyes. It gives people life and the eyes are the very first thing that you see in a portrait. Also you want three dimensionality, in here what we did is we still lit the mask of her face correctly but she's turned sideways and so now what you are seeing is a rim light on here face. She has a beautiful profile and that's what you are trying to accentuate."