Lighting Ratios Quick Tip

Lighting  •  Photography Tips

A lot of times, it’s the simplest of tips that have the biggest impact on the work that we do. Today, we’re going to explore this with a recent video from photographer Daniel Norton, showing us a quick useful tip on lighting ratios:

The video is pretty straight-forward and involves some trial and error on your part until you find the best look for the type of shoot you’re trying to go for.

For the above photo, Norton set the key light to the appropriate exposure, the hair light is one stop overexposed, and the fill light is one stop underexposed.

As you try out different settings, you might end up with a photo like this one, where the fill light was dialed down from 9 stops (in the initial photo) to 3. Notice how the shadows are much more prominent here than in the initial shot.

But, as I said above, and as Norton says in the video, the best results are obtained after testing in your specific conditions.