Light and reflector position - Have I been doing it wrong??

[Raptor Mike]

I'm going over some 'studio' (I say studio but it was my front room) images of my friend and something has occurred to me. The umbrella is 45deg camera left facing the front of his body. IIRC the reflector was either 90deg or 45deg camera right. Have i got them the wrong side? The way I have it the front of his torso is lit but the closest side of his face isn't as much. If I had them the other way the closest side of his face would be more lit but the front of his torso wouldn't be. If I do have it the correct way, it it the same way for a head shot?

Straight out of camera, converted to JPEG

20160427-IMG_0657 by Michael Parker, on Flickr


20160427-IMG_0673 by Michael Parker, on Flickr

 

[Phil V]

There's no 'right or wrong'.

There are several 'classic' lighting patterns and infinite variations thereof.

The most common mistake made by noob's is not positioning the flash high enough, the natural light direction is from above. You've made that mistake I'm afraid, it makes the facial shadows look slightly unnatural.

You should look to read about lighting patterns, I think there's an overview on the Lencarta site.

As far as the keylight being on the 'right' side? The common first lighting to learn is 'short lighting' which creates a shadow on the cheek nearest the camera, effectively slimming the face. As I said your light is a little low, but if you'd lifted it you'd see the signature triangle of light under the near eye.

Hope that helps.

 

[Phil V]

The other tip to help your mate look his best is to push the chin slightly forward. Has to be subtle, but it'd improve that shot 100%

 

[Raptor Mike]

There's no 'right or wrong'.

There are several 'classic' lighting patterns and infinite variations thereof.

The most common mistake made by noob's is not positioning the flash high enough, the natural light direction is from above. You've made that mistake I'm afraid, it makes the facial shadows look slightly unnatural.

You should look to read about lighting patterns, I think there's an overview on the Lencarta site.

As far as the keylight being on the 'right' side? The common first lighting to learn is 'short lighting' which creates a shadow on the cheek nearest the camera, effectively slimming the face. As I said your light is a little low, but if you'd lifted it you'd see the signature triangle of light under the near eye.

Hope that helps.

Thank you Phil. Helpful as always

The other tip to help your mate look his best is to push the chin slightly forward. Has to be subtle, but it'd improve that shot 100%

I did, although Im not sure if he did it in those. Just ones I grabbed quickly to help illustrate my point

 

[Garry Edwards]

There's no 'right or wrong'.

There are several 'classic' lighting patterns and infinite variations thereof.

The most common mistake made by noob's is not positioning the flash high enough, the natural light direction is from above. You've made that mistake I'm afraid, it makes the facial shadows look slightly unnatural.

You should look to read about lighting patterns, I think there's an overview on the Lencarta site.

As far as the keylight being on the 'right' side? The common first lighting to learn is 'short lighting' which creates a shadow on the cheek nearest the camera, effectively slimming the face. As I said your light is a little low, but if you'd lifted it you'd see the signature triangle of light under the near eye.

Hope that helps.

What Phil said.
Also, bear in mind that lighting isn't so much about where the light goes, it's more about where the light doesn't go, in other words it's about creating the right shadows in the right places.
For your particular model, short lighting as used here (but maybe a bit more extreme) is a very good approach because it dramatically thins the face.
In a large studio, with black walls, the shadow area on his face would be much darker, especially if you had used a softbox instead of an umbrella (there is always a lot of unwanted bounce from nearby walls etc with an umbrella) and you would then have the option of having an on-axis fill light, if required, to lighten the shadow areas.

OK, it's an umbrella and it's probably a small room with a lot of unwanted bounce, but there are still things you can do. The obvious thing, with this pose, would be to position him closer to the left hand wall, so that less light bounced off of the right hand wall and so there would be less unplanned fill. The other thing you can do is to use a black absorber, on the unlit side. This can be a large black card or the black side of a 5 in 1 reflector. Positioning it fairly close to the subject will give you a lot more lighting control.