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6 minute read
A Guide to Portrait Lighting
Understanding the qualities of light is an essential first step in learning about portrait photography lighting. Discover how its hardness, temperature and direction can impact your portraits of others
Photography is a process of light, but light is especially impactful in portraiture. As ever, there are broader creative choices at play when it comes to portrait photography — the model, backdrop and composition — but above all else, portrait photography lighting will shape your entire image.
Before diving into specific portrait lighting setups, it’s important to understand what you’re looking at and how your portrait lighting choices can shape the look of your subject and the final result. Specifically, we’re looking at the qualities of light — the basis of achieving a particular look.
Whether you’re hoping to get started with studio portrait lighting or prefer to create out in the field with natural light, this knowledge will be foundational to your success as a portrait photographer.
Understanding Light Hardness and Softness
The hardness or softness of your portrait lighting can be identified in a few ways. The first is shadow transition. With hard light, the delineation between areas of light and shadow is very stark with little bleed. As light becomes softer, shadows appear to fade gradually into well-lit areas.
Looking at a model’s face in hard light, the shadows cast by their features will strongly resemble the features themselves — imagine a clearly defined shadow of their nose falling on their cheek, for example. In soft light, the shadows cast by a model’s features are more amorphous.
Photo 2023 © Julia Trotti | FUJIFILM X-S20 and FUJINON XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR, 1/400 sec at F1.4, ISO 250
Another key identifier of hard light is specular highlights. Harder sources create bold catchlights in eyes, reflections on glossed lips and bright spots on pieces of jewellery. These reflective surfaces will naturally bounce soft light towards the camera to some degree but with much less of a distinctive sparkle than hard light.
Finally, look for shadow contrast. This is the difference in brightness between shadows and lit areas. Shadow contrast will typically be much greater when your model is under hard light, compared to soft. This effect can be diminished, even in hard light, by supplementing shadow areas with an additional light source, known as a fill. With a single source, however, shadow contrast is telling.
What Makes Light Hard or Soft?
The hardness or softness of portrait lighting is determined primarily by a few factors: the size of the light source relative to your model, its distance from your model, and the level of diffusion at play.
The larger the light source — again, in relation to your model — the softer the light. In studio portrait lighting, photographers use tools like umbrellas to increase the effective size of a flash and soften its output. Conversely, tools like a snoot, which focuses light into a tighter beam, are used to harden illumination.
Photo 2023 © Justine Milton | FUJIFILM GFX50S II and FUJINON GF45mmF2.8 R WR, 1/60 sec at F2.8, ISO 3200
As a light source moves further from a portrait subject, it becomes harder. So, let’s take an example from an available light portraiture this time. The midday sun is a distant light source, and therefore extremely hard. An artificial source, like a strobe or continuous LED, can be moved with ease, but with no way to adjust the distance between us and the sun, we must look to other means if we wish to soften it.
That’s where diffusion comes in. As light passes through another object, it becomes softer. In nature, the sun’s rays may pass through cloud cover, becoming diffused and therefore softer. In studio photography, a thin fabric softbox may be placed over the artificial source, when softness is your desired effect.
How Does Hard and Soft Light Affect a Portrait?
The hardness or softness of light shapes the way a model appears on camera, perhaps more distinctly than any other quality of light. When choosing between the two, consider the aesthetic you’re going for and the subject you’re photographing.
Soft lighting is more commonly used in portraiture because it illuminates a person’s features in a more forgiving way. Hard light is not flattering for the majority of people. But, if soft light is beauty, hard light is drama. With a harder source, you can create bold lighting looks and intrigue your audience. It’s important to remember that portraiture isn’t always about making someone look their objective “best”.
Photo 2023 © Roh Seunghwan | FUJIFILM GFX50S II and FUJINON GF110mmF2 R LM WR, 1/8 sec at F5.6, ISO 100
Colour Temperature in Photography
In the context of portrait lighting and beyond, the temperature of light is easy to identify. You may hear it referred to as cool or warm colour temperature, and this refers to the presence of blue or golden shades respectively.
Measured on the Kelvin scale, warm light has lower values whereas cool light has higher values. Pure white light, like the midday sun, falls around 5400K. Many artificial sources can be controlled specifically by Kelvin value, but in nature, you’re at the mercy of conditions. Sunrise and sunset offer much warmer light — hence the iconic moniker of golden hour. Natural light is cooler immediately after sunset, during the blue hour, or when there’s cloud cover.
Colour temperature can also be manipulated using your camera’s white balance. The Auto White Balance mode of FUJIFILM X Series cameras adjusts to conditions — artificial or natural — but you can take control by setting the white balance manually. We’d recommend doing so sparingly.
Photo 2023 © Shoichi Asaoka | FUJIFILM X-T5 and FUJINON XF33mmF1.4 R LM WR, 1/6000 sec at F1.4, ISO 125
The only real question when choosing between warm and cool light is: what do you want your viewer to feel? Though simple, the effect is significant. Always consider that the colour temperature of your portrait should fit with the broader aesthetic behind it.
How Does the Direction of Light Impact Portrait Photography?
The final key quality of light is its direction. Exactly as you’d imagine, this refers to where light is falling on your model from. As an extreme example, imagine holding a torch directly under, then directly over, your face. Undoubtedly, every feature will look drastically different.
Taking a more nuanced portrait photography approach, the direction of light feeds into what’s known as lighting patterns. In essence, that’s where — and how — shadows fall on a model’s face.
Photo 2023 © Ivan Joshua Loh | FUJIFILM GFX100S and FUJINON GF80mmF1.7 R WR, 1/30 sec at F1.7, ISO 250
Even with a single light source, many lighting techniques are possible. For more of an intense, moody portrait, you might light directly from the side, leaving half your model’s face in shadow. For a more classic beauty portrait, try a higher, more front-on light direction. Using natural light, like the sun, you’ll have to move your model rather than the source itself – but this is easily done.
Assessing the creatives you admire for their choice of hardness, temperature and direction is a great way to learn. Visit FUJIFILM UK on Instagram or have a look at our X-Photographer gallery, and analyse away. Always remember that experimentation is second to none, though, so take this knowledge and put it into practice with your preferred light. Why not come along to one of our photography events to practise your new portrait lighting techniques and skills?
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