Portrait Lighting with One Light

Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away with lighting, but lighting doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective.

For this shoot, time was limited, so I wanted to simplify things by reducing my variables.

I decided to use a single strobe, mounted in a stripbox to the model’s right (camera left), positioned in such a way that the light subtly wrapped around her while the spill gave a gentle glow to the background. A large white reflector was placed opposite the light to the model’s left for fill.

Here’s a lighting diagram of the setup and the final image:

Strobe was metered at f/10.0 @ 125/sec.

Author: Galen

Combining a lifelong passion for photography with an ever growing fascination with the properties of light, Galen specializes in portrait, fashion, and fine art photography with the goal of producing dynamic, quality images through focused effort and attention to detail.

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