Basic Portraiture/ Posing Guides

Here's a simple posing guides for all models out there. It can give you some basic idea on how to pose to get different kind of feel. Read more after the jump.

Butterfly/ Paramount

The butterfly lighting or normally called Hollywood style is one of the favourite among all lighting styling. It is simple to create it once you know how it is formed. Read more after the jump.

High Key & Low Key

Ever heard of High Key and Low Key images? Here's some explanation for you on what is High Key and what is Low Key. There's also tips on how to do the setup for both types of shots.

The Umbrella

Here is another useful light shaping tools which is the umbrella. It is one of the most favourite light shaping tools used by all photographers. It can have many functions that will help enhance your light quality. Read more after the jump.

Basic portraiture setup, broad and short lighting

In this section I will be showing you the basic portraiture lighting style and what is broad lighting, short lighting. This is some of the easiest lighting styles which you should master.

Open loop and close loop lighting

Here is 2 simple lighting styles which are commonly used by photographers in portraiture photography. One of it is open loop lighting and the other is close loop lighting.








Open loop

"Open loop" lighting is obtained by using the short lighting method. The shadow formed by the nose does not 'join' to the shadow on the side of the face that faces the camera. You can create the same effect if you increase the angle of the light which is coming from the side of the face which is not towards the camera. Below is an example of how open loop lighting looks like:

Did you see that the shadow of the nose does not connect to the shadow at the other side of the cheek? But after you add the softbox down, the effect becomes not so obvious.

Close loop/ Rembrandt Lighting

Rembrandt lighting is obtained by combining short lighting and butterfly lighting. The main light is positioned high and on the side of the face that is away from the camera. This technique produces an illuminated triangle on the cheek closest to the camera. The triangle will illuminate just under the eye and not below the nose.

By looking at the picture above, can you get a glimpse of what I'm trying to say? This effect can be easily obtained when you decrease the angle of the light coming from the face that is away from the camera. The shadow will eventually do a close loop.

Lighting ratio

The next thing that you will need to learn before you actually start using the studio lighting is to understand lighting ratio. So what it is? It is the difference between the main light and the fill.