Portrait Lighting Basics with a One Light Setup

Lighting  •  Photography Tips  •  Portrait Photography

A one light setup is simple yet effective—and apparently, easy to do, as Jay P Morgan from The Slanted Lens explains it. He starts off by saying that “everything in the world is a ball, a cube or a cylinder.” A key light is used to highlight across the face, leaving a shadow line which drops into a deeper shadow. The core is the area that transitions from fill shadow to highlight. He used a fill card to fill in the shadow side without obliterating the core transition to the front:

Morgan chose to shoot video with a Canon EOS 1D-C and lifted stills off of that. Here are some of the results:

A one light setup allowed his model to go from a Rembrandt to a butterfly into a split light thanks to a Dynalight 1600 Pack + Head and a medium Photoflex softbox as a key light.

Morgan also mentions how they used this textured fabric in their second setup. By positioning it closer to the camera, he achieved a soft focus effect.