The document discusses various types of lighting used for portrait photography, including key light, fill light, hair light, edge light, and background light. It defines each type of lighting and provides techniques for their effective use, such as using a soft or hard key light, reflecting the key light as fill light, and using barn doors or egg crates to control light spill. The goal is to use different lighting setups and techniques to illuminate the subject and create separation from the background.

1. Interview Lighting
∗ What will you need this for? You will need this when your taking
portraits of people. The lighting that you will be learning about can
affect your picture in many ways. Study these different types of
lighting and then when you get comfortable with them you will be
able to use the effectively in your photos.

8. KEY LIGHT
∗ Key Light defined: The primary or dominant source of
light in a shot. It often suggests an out of frame source.
Choice of fixture (hard or soft) and its position will help
set the mood of the shot.

9. Key Lighting
Soft Key Light Hard Key Light
∗ Uses an egg crate to control the ∗ Uses a 250-watt Pro-light.
lights spill. ∗ Hard Key Light will make the a
∗ Soft Key Light will make the photo dramatic change between light and
diffused. dark in the photo.

10. Key Light Techniques
∗ When you practice placing the Key
light on your subject, keep an eye on
the shadow it creates from the nose.
∗ You should move the key light so that
you don’t have a nose shadow. You
should move your key light so that
the lights blend and create a smooth
lighting.

11. Simple Light Setups
∗ If you want to have a simpler setup for your
shoot you could use one light as the key and fill
light.
∗ A back light could be helpful to add the finishing
touch on the person’s hair.
∗ In the picture to the right you can see they use
one light in the front and a small light in the
background.
∗ Experiment with the positioning of the lighting.

12. Fill Light
∗ Fill light is used to lighten shadows. Combined with the
Key light, Fill light helps define the mood by lighting the
shaded areas in a range of intensities. The amount of fill
light can vary from none, to a level equaling the Key
light.

13. Fill Light
∗ After setting the Key light, you may find that the darker side of the
face is too dark for your tastes. That is where the Fill light comes
into place.
∗ Fill light lights up the side that is left shaded.
∗ The amount of Fill light that is needed depends on what your
preference is so experiment with the amount of lighting.
∗ You can adjust the feeling of the photo by adjusting the amount of
Fill light.

14. Fill Light Techniques
∗ The fill light is used to fill the
shadows in so you must adjust
the light so that the shadows are
blended smoothly.
∗ You will need to experiment with
the amount and the positioning
of the light so that you get the
lighting you are looking for.
A) Lower ratio of Key to Fill light
B) B) Higher ratio of Key to Fill light
C) C) Double Nose Shadow

15. Reflected Fill Light
Another method of providing Fill is
by bouncing the Key light off of a
reflector. A specular reflector will
kick back nearly as much light as the Specular Reflector bouncing Soft
Key light shining on it, in the same Key light to create Fill
degree of hardness that strikes it. Closeup detail

16. Hair Light
∗ Hair light is a light from behind the subject,
often weaker than the Key or Fill, aimed at the
head & shoulders. It may also called a
backlight. It separates the subject from the
background and adds highlights & shine to hair,
and is often widened to include a subject's
shoulders.

17. Hair Light Techniques
∗ Hair light is a finesse lighting that can be used along with
Fill.
∗ Traditionally Hair lights are placed directly opposite the
camera. It creates highlights and gives a nice shine to the
hair.
∗ If you are dealing with thinning hair or bald heads, you
probably already have enough separation from the
background; either because of the contrast or color
differences, and only want to play with adding a subtle edge
to the side of the head and neck. For shiny heads you could
have separate lights for each shoulder or put up a
traditional hair light and block, or flag, the part of the light
falling on the head.
∗ Since all backlights are aimed in the direction of the camera
be careful to keep any light from shining into the front of
the lens, causing lens flare.

18. Edge Light
∗ Edge light defined: A light from behind the subject,
often weaker than the Key or Fill, is placed to create an
edge of definition between subject and background.
Similar in practice to Hair light, it is also a form of
backlight normally used to define one dark object from
another, for example a dark jacket from a similarly dark
background.

19. Edge Light Techniques
∗ Edge lights create subtle defining 'edges',
and line-like highlights, which can be
added to your setup to delineate the edge
of your subject.
∗ If your subject's dark hair or jacket seems
to blend into a similarly dark background
you can add an 'edge' to visibly separate,
or cut them away, from the background.
∗ It is popular to have a light edge along the
jaw line. Try hard sources at different
distances and angles. Try using a small
light with an umbrella or with a diffusion
gel.
∗ Edge lights are also aimed in the direction
of the camera, so be careful to keep any
light from shining into the front of the
lens, causing lens flare.

20. Background Light
∗ Background Light defined: Used
for lighting the background of a
set, as a whole or specific
areas. Or for lighting objects in
the background of the set that
are significant to the image. It
also contributes to creating
separation between subject
and background. It is possible
to use multiple background
lights.

21. Background Light Techniques
∗ By the time you've put up your Key, Fill,
Hair and Edge lights you might have light
bouncing off the walls and ceiling lighting
up the background too much. You can try
turning off any room lights, or by adding
distance between the subject and the
background. In combination with these is
the ability to control the lights you've
placed in the setting.
∗ Since large broad sources tend to spill on
the background consider using an Egg
Crate on any soft lights you use

22. Slash Accent
∗ Slash Accent- made by putting 2 barn
doors close together.
∗ You can mix the slash with general
background fill, making it less
prominent, or use the slash accent
alone in a darker background to
increase its effect. Coloring the slash
with a gel is also a common approach.

23. Highlight Accent
∗ Highlight Accent- adding a
highlight to an object in the
setting.
∗ In this shot, we used a tiny L-light
with 100 Watt lamp directed to
place a small pool of light on the
flowers and the picture frame. The
hard light of the lamp created a
sharp shadow.

24. Color Background
∗ Color Background provides a
contrast of color and feel between
the environment and the subject.
∗ In this shot, we added red gel to an
Omni-light, focused wide enough to
cover the background area of the
shot.
∗ Use barn doors on the fixture to trim
any spill that may fall on the subject,
as its color will make it very
noticeable.