Studio lighting: 4 seriously simple lighting techniques to try at home

jmeyer | Photography Tips | Portraits | 29/08/2012 12:24pm

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Studio lighting can seem daunting if you’ve never tried it before. However, most portrait photography lighting techniques are not nearly as scary as most people think. By using a simple home photo studio kit with just a couple of flash heads and a few basic accessories, you can get great results in no time at all. In fact, it’s arguably easier to use a studio lighting setup than off-camera flash.

For this studio lighting tutorial we’re using a two-head Elinchrom D-Lite it 2 Studio 2 Go kit, which costs about £500 ($630), but there are plenty of other options to choose from that will suit any budget.

We’ll take you through some of the standard kit you need, and show you four great studio lighting techniques for shooting professional-looking portraits in your home photo studio, with the help of our beautiful model, Jade.

While these classic lighting techniques are a great starting point, it’s best to experiment, so if you’re working in you’re own home photo studio don’t be afraid to tweak these studio lighting setups.

Each technique will take about 30 minutes to set up and shoot.

Now let’s get started and see how it’s done!

PAGE 1: Introduction to studio lighting
PAGE 2: Creating the perfect home photo studio
PAGE 3: Rembrandt studio lighting setup
PAGE 4: Clamshell studio lighting setup
PAGE 5: Backlight studio lighting setup
PAGE 6: Rim light studio lighting setup
PAGE 7: Final tips on studio lighting