Best Portrait Photography Lighting Setup Tips For Beginners
Picture this: You’ve picked the best location for photoshoot, scouted all the angles, planned your poses, and even got the perfect wardrobe. Lighting can be tricky, but the good news is that the more you understand natural light and how to work with it, the easier your portraits will become. This article will help you start by explaining the basics of portrait photography lighting for beginners. You’ll learn about the different types of lighting, how to find the best portrait photography lighting at your next photoshoot, and tips for getting it just right.
There’s nothing like shooting in a naturally lit space to create beautiful portraits, and Home Studio List can help you find the perfect location for your next shoot. With a wide selection of styled house rentals for photography, you can escape the elements and enjoy all the benefits of working in a home studio, including stunning natural light.
What is Portrait Photography?
Portrait photography, also referred to as portraiture, is a type of photography in which the subject is one or more people and the aim is to convey something about the subject’s identity, personality, or story. It’s usually created with the strategic use of lighting and backdrops, and an important component of portrait photography is understanding how to pose a subject while helping them look natural and comfortable.
It’s a style of photography that is often commissioned to commemorate milestones or special events, to help individuals market themselves in an increasingly digital world, or even to create a memory of a certain point in one’s life. On the commercial side of things, portrait photography is used by companies and brands to add a human face to their business.
Storytelling and Style in Portrait Photography
It’s also frequently commissioned for storytelling purposes, whether it’s a celebrity portrait accompanying an article about them, a picture of someone being featured in a news story, or a portrait used in an ad to convey a feeling that a brand wants to associate with itself.
This type of photography offers a huge range of possibilities. Portraits can be clean, professional, and practical or highly stylized and dramatic. It all depends on the goals of the photographer and the person or brand commissioning the photograph.
Emotion and Intent in Portraits
A portrait of a corporate CEO might try to convey a feeling of expertise, trust, and professionalism. In contrast, a picture of an actor might be more geared toward evoking awe at the range of emotion they can express or appreciation for their beauty.
A grade school portrait may convey cheerfulness, while a university graduation portrait might try to represent hopefulness for the future. The element of storytelling and connection to a feeling or emotion ties all of these together.
Related Reading
Best Portrait Photography Lighting Setup Tips
Continuous lighting for portrait photography involves keeping the lights on in the backdrop while taking photos. It’s simple, you turn them on, observe how they illuminate your scene, choose your exposure settings, and begin shooting. With continuous illumination, you can even utilize your camera's auto setting.
This LED studio light offers continuous illumination and can also be used for video. It’s easy to grasp, and if you’re a novice, you may start here. However, there are some drawbacks.
Challenges of Continuous Lighting
You must always use an external power supply to power your lights. Because you’re leaving them on longer, the setup will rapidly heat up, which is extremely annoying in a tiny studio. In mixed lighting circumstances, such as in a room with fluorescent or tungsten lamps, a more powerful light may be required to completely overcome the mixed lighting.
Innovative Solutions in LED Lighting
The good news is that many light brands have spent time and effort overcoming these shortcomings. Take the COLBOR CL100X as an example. It adopts COB LED beads that produce less heat. Besides, it has multiple sensors that assess the operating temperature in real time and adjust the fan speed to provide optimal working conditions.
As for the power output, the CL100X is in the PowerCube design. You could combine up to 10 models to generate 1100W power by sliding the rail of one light into the chute of the other.
Speedlight: The Portable Powerhouse for Portrait Photography
Speedlights only flash when your camera takes a photo. They are powerful but light and portable, taking up little room in your camera bag. They run on standard AA batteries, so you don’t have to worry about finding a power source when traveling to different sites for picture sessions.
Monolight: The Studio Strobe for Portrait Photography
Monolights, often known as studio strobes, are self-powered flash devices that quickly produce bright light. They are larger and heavier than speed lights but recycle faster between shoots. Their light is so intense that you may use them outside to overpower the sunlight.
A Simple Guide to Setting Up Your Studio Lights For Portraits
When it comes to studio portrait photography, whether you use one light or four, you can create excellent results with a little ingenuity and some setup knowledge.
Four Common Setups of Single Light Studio Portrait Photography
As a novice photographer, the greatest approach to learning about lighting is to experiment with a single piece of equipment and learn how to utilize it efficiently. Here are four common ways to position your studio light for portrait photography.
1. Classic 45-Degree Light: The Portrait Photography Lighting Setup for Beginners
This studio portrait photography lighting setup is the most basic one beginner photographers start with. Place the light source in front of the model roughly at a 45-degree angle. Place it as close to the subject as possible without getting it in the frame.
As expected, you can see some nose shadow on the side of the face that’s away from the light source. There’s also a fall-off to the shadows on the parts of the neck and shoulder that are away from it. A better approach is to have the light coming in from a greater height. You’ll end up with softer shadows this way.
2. Side Lighting for Dramatic Portraits: A Portrait Photography Lighting Setup for Mood
Move the light to the subject's side for a more dramatic and melancholy photo. This will result in more lighting falling on one side of the model's face and a rapid falloff on the other. If you don't want something too dramatic, simply shift it forward a little. This will cause some light to flow over to the opposite side of the face.
3. Butterfly Lighting: The Beauty Portrait Photography Lighting Setup
This setup is typically used for female subjects. It provides equal illumination over the face, eliminates most shadows, and makes the face look thinner. As a result, most beauty portrait photographs employ this technique. Position the LED studio lights for portrait photography directly before and above the subject.
Make sure the softbox is slightly slanted toward the subject as well. This will illuminate the subject's face while casting shadows under the chin. Use a reflector to fill up the shadows if necessary. Or, use another light with a very low power level.
4. Backlighting: The Dramatic Portrait Photography Lighting Setup
If you're trying for a dramatic picture, this might be an interesting approach to illuminate your subject. As the name implies, this technique involves lighting your subject from behind. To obtain more light on the subject's face, have them turn slightly toward the light.
Natural vs Artificial Lighting in Portrait Photography
Natural light, like sunlight, can create stunning results in portrait photography. Most people are so accustomed to being photographed under natural light that it feels more familiar and flattering than artificial lighting. Lighting from above, like that from the sun, creates even shadows that help to smooth facial imperfections.
In contrast, light from below, like a torch under the chin, feels unnatural and creates opposite shadows that distort the face. As photographer Kenton says, “Natural light is great for beginners because it’s often softer and easier to work with.”
Natural Light Tips for Portraits
If you position your subject near a window on a cloudy day, the clouds act as a diffuser, softening shadows and spreading the light more evenly across the face. Outdoors, shooting during the golden hour, shortly after sunrise or just before sunset, produces warm, gentle light that helps balance the exposure between your subject and the background.
Artificial Light in Portrait Photography: The Key to Control
Artificial lighting, on the other hand, gives you more control. It allows you to shape the light, decide on its direction, and create a consistent look regardless of the weather or time of day. It also requires more technical know-how, and the results can look flat or unnatural if not used carefully.
In the end, successful portrait lighting, natural or artificial, is all about observing where your light is coming from and adjusting your setup to flatter your subject. For beginners, it’s best to start with natural light and learn how it behaves before moving into the more complex world of artificial setups.
Shoot-Ready Spaces for Creatives
Home Studio List connects photographers and brands with beautifully styled homes and photography studios available for hourly rentals across 40+ states, eliminating the need to haul props or hunt for perfect natural lighting.
Our curated spaces are styled and shoot-ready, with on-site hosts to ensure a smooth experience from booking to production day. With streamlined booking managed by our Reservation Managers, creatives can focus on their craft while we handle all the logistics:
Simply browse
Book
Show up to shoot
Related Reading
Creative Portrait Photography Ideas
Portrait Photography Settings
10 Best Tips for Better Portrait Photos
1. Focus on the Eyes
Eyes are evocative and powerful. Compose the portrait so the subject's eyes are a central focal point. Consider blurring the background to place even more emphasis on their facial features.
2. Use Indirect Light
Nothing ruins a portrait like a subject squinting into direct sunlight. When shooting portraits, choose a light source that is bright but not direct. If you’re shooting inside, consider placing the subject near a window to take advantage of the natural light.
When you’re outside, shoot in a shady area or wait until it’s cloudy. You can also use a portable diffuser to soften direct light.
3. Shoot at Your Subject’s Eye Level
For example, when shooting children, place yourself at their level instead of shooting from above. In more creative portraiture, experimentation with angles might yield interesting results. Get creative, but remember that shooting from above can diminish your subject, and shooting from below can create unflattering angles.
4. Practice with Someone You Know
Portrait photography is an intimate art form. Begin by practicing with someone you already have rapport with, and ask them to provide feedback on your style. A confident photographer knows that there is always more to learn.
5. Respect Your Subjects
Subjects not used to having their picture taken are usually uneasy about being with a photographer. Even people who are used to it don’t like it that much. Trust and respect are essential.
For instance, checking the back of the camera frequently to look at the picture might seem rude unless you show the subject what you are looking at, too. Making the subject stay for hours will not help, either. If things aren’t going well, it is better just to schedule another session.
6. Consider the Setting
There’s more to good portrait photography than professional headshots lit with a softbox. Shooting environmental portraits in a natural setting (as opposed to a staged one) can be a great way to create visual interest while revealing something about your subject’s life and personality.
Consider shooting your portrait subject as they go about their everyday life and activities, especially if they’re having trouble relaxing in front of the camera.
7. Aim for a Shallow Depth of Field
When shooting portraits, you typically want the focus to be on your subject’s face, not the background. In other words, you want the subject’s face to be sharply focused, but the background should be much softer.
To achieve this effect, you may need to tinker with your DSLR’s camera settings. A wide aperture will help create a shallow field depth, and to compensate for the increased light, you’ll probably need to increase your shutter speed.
8. Practice with Different Portrait Lenses
While a standard 50mm lens might work great in many situations, you may want to experiment with other options for shooting portraits. It may seem counterintuitive, but telephoto lenses (or other lenses with longer focal lengths) can be great for portrait photography, since they can intensify the contrast between your subject and the background.
They also allow you to shoot close-up photos without getting too close. It’s generally best to avoid wide-angle lenses (unless you’re going for a distorted or surreal style), as they exaggerate your subject’s features, especially near the edge of the frame.
9. Use Post-Processing to Bring Out Highlights
When you post-process portraits, you’re continuing the line of thought you had when you were shooting, which involves paying close attention to the relationship between your subject and your background.
When a viewer looks at a photo, their eyes are usually drawn to the brightest or most colorful part of the image, so when you process a photo, you can balance the brightness and the colors to make sure your subject stands out.
10. Always Shoot in RAW
When you go into post-processing, you want to have as much material to work with as possible. Digital photography means shooting in RAW.
While RAW formats introduce larger file sizes and greater complexity, they also give you the greatest possible control over your images' appearance. You’ll be especially thankful for RAW images when it comes to adjusting the white balance of your photographs.
Related Reading
Studio Portrait Photography Ideas
Photography Location Guide
Browse Our Spaces for Your Next Shoot Today
Home Studio List connects photographers and brands with beautifully styled homes and photography studios available for hourly rentals across 40+ states, eliminating the need to haul props or hunt for perfect natural lighting.
Our curated spaces are styled and shoot-ready, with on-site hosts to ensure a smooth experience from booking to production day. With streamlined booking managed by our Reservation Managers, creatives can focus on their craft while we handle all the logistics:
Simply browse
Book
Show up to shoot
Browse our spaces for your next shoot today!