Photo Tip - Why You Need A Fill Light In Portrait Photography!

[seoxeee]

In the last few photo tips articles, we have been discussing portrait photography lighting patterns… Short light, broad light, split light, the loop lighting pattern, Rembrandt and finally the butterfly lighting pattern. Today's photo tip is about controlling the lighting pattern's shadows with a fill light.

Each of our lighting patterns has their good and bad points and will be perfect for some faces and terrible for others. If you haven't done any experimenting to master them, I suggest you make that your weekend project!

These patterns are essential building blocks to mastering portrait photography.

As photographers, we tend to concern ourselves with light, almost to the exclusion of everything else - but shadows are just as important! In fact, each of the lighting patterns we've been discussing is named for the type of shadow the light source casts!

This lighting pattern series has been all about building them with one light - the main (or key) light - and wireless busy light for office to position it to get the lighting pattern most pleasing for any specific facial type.

While it doesn't matter what sort of light it is, it could be a studio flash, the sun, a window, a reflector even nothing more than a flashlight - it is important to have the shadows to add depth and life to our portrait photography.

But, when we look at portraits done by professional photographers, we note that they almost always have more than one light source. Typically they have three and as many as five or six!

Why? And how do we know when more lights are needed and where to put them?

Again, it all goes back to the shadows!

Suppose you are using a short lighting pattern to help visually narrow the subject's face. This works because - visually - shadows tend to recede and lit areas come forward. Since the shadow is closest to the camera, it makes the face look thinner.