Shaping and modifying light can be a fun and creative way to make your portrait photography stand out. There are a multitude of techniques and tools to use to create compelling and dynamic portraits. Combining creative lighting techniques, with effective and easy to use light shaping tools, allows you to make beautiful portraits while maintaining full control of the shape and quality of your lighting.
In this guide, we’re going to cover how you can create dynamic portraits by using a camera flash, light modifiers, and an optical snoot. We’ll be going over the techniques to create high and low-key lighting, while also learning about various photo accessories and how to create compelling light patterns.
Gear Breakdown
The following gear was used to create the images in this guide:
- Flashpoint Lighting XPLOR 300 PRO
- Flashpoint Lighting R2 Pro MK II Trigger
- Glow EZ Lock 34” Beauty Dish Silver
- V-Flat World Foldable V-Flats
- CLAR SA-P1 Projection Attachment
- Sony Alpha A1 Mirrorless Camera
- Sony 85mm F1.4 G-Master Lens
- Glow Bowens Mount Flash Bracket
- Stella Pro Lights CL8000 Continuous Light
What is high-key lighting?
High-key lighting is a style of lighting that has low contrast and minimal shadows. It is relatively bright and full of highlights. It provides a uniform light that can wrap around a subject and make it easy to shoot from any angle.
Setting up a high-key shot using flash
It’s relatively easy to create an evenly lit high-key backdrop by using a V-Flat World Foldable V-Flat and a powerful off-camera flash like the Flashpoint Lighting XPLOR 300 PRO. Foldable V-Flats are lightweight foam boards that offer a black-and-white reversible surface. The white side is to bounce or reflect light. It can also create the perfect high-key backdrop. Placing a bare XPLOR 300 PRO behind your subject and shooting it directly into the white side of a V-Flat results in a soft light that wraps around your subject. This technique creates a high-key background full of bright highlights, and a uniformly lit subject with minimal shadows.
What is low-key lighting?
Low-key lighting is a type of lighting that has a high ratio of shadows to highlights. Inspired by the techniques used in film noir, low-key lighting in portrait photography allows creators to sculpt light onto their subjects with mood and effect. Dynamic portraits are created with low-key lighting through the control of highlights, contrast, and shadows.
Setting up a low-key shot using V-Flats
Foldable V-Flats are a great way to quickly and easily create low-key portraits. The black side of a V-Flat absorbs light. It creates a nice canvas of dark shadows to carve your subject out. V-Flats are the perfect multi-purpose light modifiers for low-key portraiture since they can be used as a black backdrop and to control the spill of light.
Using a gridded beauty dish to control light-spill
Controlling the spill of light onto the backdrop is an essential part of creating a low-key portrait. Light spill is greatly reduced through the use of a beauty dish, like the Glow EZ Lock 34” Beauty Dish Silver. Place a gridded beauty dish at a 45-degree angle to the subject and slightly above the eye-line. This allows for the creation of beautiful catch-lights in the subject’s eyes. It also ensures good control of light-spill onto the backdrop. Moving the subject and the light further away from the backdrop can also aid in light-spill reduction if necessary.
Bringing it all together with an optical snoot and gobos
The CLAR SA-P1 Projection Attachment is a light modifier known as an optical snoot. It allows for the creation and control of patterns of light. It focuses the light from your flash or continuous light into a beam. The focused light can then be shaped, using various lenses and metal discs known as gobos, or “go betweens.” These metal discs sit in between the focused beam light of the optical snoot, and the attached lens which projects the light. Combining the multitude of gobo shapes and patterns with low-key portrait photography lighting can make for some really dynamic and compelling images.
There are many patterns to choose when you are working with the lighting in your portrait photography. This can be a fun and creative way to take your low-key portraiture to the next level. There are limitless types of dynamic images that you can enjoy with the techniques and light-shaping tools covered in this guide. With the multitude of available gobos, the versatility of reversible V-Flats, and the unique light patterns that optical snoots can create, the only limit to creating spectacular portraits is your imagination.
