Light Science and Magic, 4th Edition

8

An Arsenal of Lights

Good lighting is one of the most important aspects of portrait making. We can do everything else beautifully, but if our lighting is poor our picture will suffer—often fatally. It is that simple. And with that in mind, we will look at some of the factors that it is important to keep in mind when lighting any portrait.

We will start by explaining the simplest of all portrait lighting; the use of a single light source. We call the light that provides most of the illumination for any portrait the main or key light, and we generally ...