Transforming your portraits from ordinary to extraordinary often comes down to how you manipulate lighting. Here's an effective and affordable approach.
Coming to you from Lindsay Adler Photography, this insightful video explores three types of umbrellas to create a dramatic portrait. Adler shares her journey from struggling with umbrellas to mastering their use. She demonstrates how different umbrella types and techniques can dramatically alter the mood and quality of your portraits.
Adler starts by using a silver umbrella as the main light. Silver umbrellas produce a specular, harder light that adds definition and contrast. By closing the umbrella, Adler controls the light spread, ensuring a dramatic, shadowy background. This setup gives a crisp, defined look.
The second light in Adler’s setup is a medium white umbrella with diffusion, used as a hair light. This placement softens the light, adding a beautiful glow and separation from the background. The choice of a white umbrella with diffusion creates a traditional, Hollywood-style portrait with softer highlights, making the subject stand out without harsh shadows.
Adler completes her setup with a small, white shoot-through umbrella behind the subject. This light adds depth by creating a gradient on the background. The small size of the umbrella allows for flexible positioning, and the shoot-through design ensures an even spread of light. This technique enhances the overall composition, adding dimension and focus to the portrait.
The demonstration shows the versatility of umbrellas in studio lighting. They are affordable, easy to use, and portable, making them an excellent choice for photographers at any skill level. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Adler.
If you would like to continue learning about how to light a portrait, be sure to check out "Illuminating The Face: Lighting for Headshots and Portraits With Peter Hurley!"
Always forget to use the collapsed umbrella technique but it's a good one.
Anyone else feel like the images at 9:50 are overly retouched? I know people love to say "this modifier makes skin look so great" but to me this seems a little heavy handed in the retouch. Maybe I'm way off base?
I think way too much contrast. Looks like she was going for that old Hollywood BW look where the highlights are blown out, presumably for skin smoothing. However, that style was typically used for women.
As for retouching where some form of blurring was used or removal of blemishes, I don't believe she did that. Below sample where I toned down the blown out area. You can see see skin texture (pores, pits, bumps, lines, etc).