Video: Portrait Photography Lighting Techniques

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Portrait photographers often light the shadows of a portrait with a reflector, umbrella or soft box to lessen the contrast in a photo. Learn how to light portrait photos in this free video on photography lighting techniques from a professional photographer.

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Video Transcript

This is Mark Bowers from bowersphotography.com in Utah and this segment is portrait lighting, portrait photography lighting techniques, and I was going to show you how I did this one shot that I thought was really nice, using light and shadow. We used a spotlight on one side to create shadow, and to create movement and depth and used a white room with a cove on it to create some three dimensionality. Normally for a portrait, what I do is use a key light on the person's face, something to fill in the shadows, either a reflector, or an umbrella or a soft box to fill in the shadow so that it's not too harsh, and create the mood that you want for the particular portrait. Another thing that you should remember is contrast control, especially with digital photography. The contrast is much higher than with film and so controlling the contrast is probably the thing that you can, that you use to create the photograph that you want, whether it's a soft contrast or a hard contrast. Contrast control is using reflectors to soften the highlights and the shadows.

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Portrait Photography Lighting Techniques

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