​FASHION LIGHTING WITH THREE LIGHTS

As photographers we try to differentiate ourselves from the others to leave an impact. There can be many different ways to achieve that. I believe one of the ways is a photographer’s most basic tool: light.

HARD LIGHT

Most photographers use soft light to light their subject. The reason is clear: it is flattering on the skin.
Hard light on the other hand gives us much more control on the shadows. Shadows can be very impactful by giving a more dramatic look. So i decided to use some hard light modifiers along with a beauty dish in this setup.

LIGHT SET-UP

In a hard light setup the placement of the strobes are much more important than it would be in a soft light setup.
Hard light modifiers don’t spread and diffuse the light like soft light modifiers. This makes the placement of the lights much more critical.

MODELING LIGHTS

When I use multiple lights, I start to place them one by one. By using modeling light I exactly see where the light falls, then make any adjustment if necessary.

BEAUTY DISH AS THE MAIN LIGHT

I have used a silver beauty dish with a grid as my main light. I love beauty dish because it doesn’t spread and diffuse the light like an octabox.
But it is also not very harsh on skin like a reflector would be. It is kind of in-between both worlds. My choice was silver because of the specularity of the light.

I almost always use a grid with the beauty dish. Because grid focuses the light on the subject and prevents it from falling on the background. I placed the beauty dish in front of the subject and slightly above the eye level.
You can experiment with different angles though. For example Rembrandt or loop lighting could be the other options.

RIM & BACKGROUND LIGHTS

My second and third lights were 18 cm reflectors with an orange and magenta gels.
I placed the reflectors around the shoulder level of the model. They fall on both sides of the model and also on the background.

I wanted to use the reflectors both as rim and background lights. So they had no grids on them.
I highly recommend using the modeling lights of the strobes. You don’t want any unwanted highlights on the face or too long shadows under the nose.

POST-PROCESSING

Using hard light means doing more skin retouching than usual. Esspecially if your subject has aged skin. Luckily my model had almost perfect skin and i didn’t need to do too much retouching on the skin.

I increased the contrast and clarity along with some curve adjustments in photoshop.