Welcome to Brading images. We are a Photography and Videography studio in Manchester, Salford, Irlam. We primarily do music videos and family photoshoots in the studio. We particularly enjoying doing: Newborn photoshoots, one year old photoshoots, toddler photoshoots, kids photoshoots, fairy photoshoots, mother daughter photoshoots, maternity photoshoots and siblings photoshoots, here, in manchester!
Outside the studio, we run a film club called The Stage and Screen Academy, where we teach filmmaking 101.
So which light should you pick? There are naturally harsh lights that will create dark shadows, like fresenells and soft lights, like LED lights.
You will use dark shadows when wanting to film horror films for example but you will want soft lighting if you are trying to create flattering lighting for a TV presenter for example.
So where should you position your lights?
There are many lighting set ups, but we will focus on just one, that you would use to light a presenter in a TV studio. To do a flattering TV presenter lighting set up, you will aim to eliminate all shadows. This isn’t 100% possible as every light source creates a shadow, however you will aim to do this.
First, you need a “main light” which is called the “key light”. This will usually be the most intense light.
You can position this one at 45 degrees of the person you are trying to light. It will essentially be aimed at one of the cheeks.
Once you have done this, you will find that it has created a shadow on the opposite side of the face. This is when you will introduce a “fill light” at 45 degrees on the other side of the face, pointing at the other cheek. You should increase the intensity of this light until you see the shadow of the key light disappear. Stop when this has happened. If you keep going, you will create a shadow on the other side of the face, and the fill light will become the key light as it will be the strongest. You do not want this as you will start getting confused.
If you set your lights at eye level, you will fi
nd that you’ve created a shadow on the background. You have a few options here. You can bring your light higher and tilt it down, so that the light beam is directed down and the shadow hits the floor, which is usually out of the frame.
You can also put more distance between the person you are filming and the background.
A combination of the 2 is usually advised.
So both your lights should be higher than the person you are filming and there should be distance between your character and the background.
Be careful not to go higher than is necessary with your light or you will start to get very long shadows under the neck which are not flattering, so just go high enough for the shadow to hit the ground, but be relatively close to eye level.
You can add a light, just lighting the background, which will also help with any shadows that have gone there. You do not want the background to be brighter than your presenter however as that will pull focus away.
Finally, so that your presenter doesn’t blend into the background, a nice to have light, is the back light. This creates a little rim of light behind the presenter’s head.
But what if you wanted a horror movie type light? I will mention 2 very easy positions for this.
You can have a harsh light directly from above or directly from under a face. This will create, long and dark shadows that are perfect for horror movies.
With just those 2 lighting set ups, you can see how where you position your lights, can truly affect the feel of what you are shooting, so think carefully about where you put those lights!
So let’s recap. There are harsh and soft lights and where you position lights will significantly affect what a person will look like on camera.