So we need to understand some of the lighting naming conventions. So what we've got is we've got the main or key light, we've got a fill light, we've got rim light, and we've got background light. So what we're going to do is this is obviously the basic introductory section, let's go have a look and help you to understand what we mean when we call these lights these different names. So this is what we call our main or our key light. Now this is the main light that we're going to use to light our subject. Now in this instance, we're using an open loop lighting pattern.

If you're unfamiliar with the basic terminology of portrait lighting, I do have a course on portrait lighting where we explain what open loop but closed loop what Rembrandt is some of the really basic lighting patterns, show you how to set them up and use them this course is an advanced course on studio lighting. But if you need that basic information I suggest can have a look at that course. And it's really going to help you to understand a lot of the stuff we're doing here if you're not familiar with standard portrait lighting terminology. So this is an open loop lighting setup, this is our main light. When we set an exposure, we always set it on the main light and then add the other lights in because the main light typically is the brightest light. So we'd start with our lighting setup here.

We would then add a fill light. We're going to show you this in the studio in a moment how we set all these up what it looks like he also have a PDF download of this setup. So you can see how all these different lighting setups work. So I feel like it's gonna light the shadow side of the face. Now we're showing these individually so you can see how each light looks on the subject. Without the other lights.

I strongly suggest you do this. When you think First set this up if you've never set up before light one light, take a picture light with the other light take a picture. So start with the main ad you fill, add your rim as your background and then see how each one of those will add to your image. So what we've got now is our rim light so this is a light that just flicks over the shoulder. Now if you have this to the side of the subject, but coming over the shoulder is a rim light. If you have above the subject coming down is what's known as a hair light the both rim lights but one is a rim light one is a hair light.

What you're seeing here is a rim light if you've not seen a hair light before on how that works again, check out the introductory course on portrait photography and portrait lighting because we will show you how the hair light looks specifically in that scenario. Now we've added a background light so this is the light that goes on the background and my critics and drama. If you want To blow it out and it was white, we would use to be showing different ways you can use all these lights as we go through the course. So what we're going to do now start building up so now we've got the background, we've added that rim light, switch that rim light back on. So now the rim light is lighting the side of the subjects face and we've got some on the background so then that starts to get interesting.

So let's add another light. Now we've added our main light. Now this is a free light setup, some people would use justice setup, quite dramatic, quite a lot of shade on the side of the face, but you do need a large softbox or light source if you don't want to create really dark shadow on that side. But let's add our final light into let's add a fill light. And now what we've got is we've got with soften the shadows on that side of the face. And now we've got a really nice lighting setup using four lights.

So let me just go back and show you that again. To start with our background light, we add our rim, we add our main, and we add our fill as a standard for light setup. So here's our standard for light setup. Now don't get too bogged down at this point because we're going to be going through lots of examples and showing you all different setups. But what we've got here, this is our main light here. So we've got a large octave box here.

Remember, you've got all the settings on the PDF for this will be in the resources section. So all the power ratings, how far away they were, and everything like that. All that information is going to be available what this is just a visual aid to help you visualize what we just did was light. So we've got the main light here. We've got a background light here, and then we've got a flag. So in this instance, we didn't want the background light to shine any light on our subject.

So we flagged it to prevent any light and you can see by the shadow that all the light from this is skimming past the subject and it's actually landing on the wall here. And then we've got just a simple umbrella for some fill on this side, and then we've got a simple deflector, creating that rim over the shoulder. So let's zoom in and have a look at this a little bit closer and have a spin around in the studio so we can see what we did. So there we go. We've got our softbox actually I use a square softbox there with quite a large one. Because can see I've got the spot there on the background.

Here we've got the umbrella so we can see the umbrella is acting as a fill. And then at the back here, we've got that spotlight. So that's a standard lighting setup. Now you'll notice our interest about the angle, all the light shining on the subject is slightly above the face. angled down. The reason we tend to do that as a rule is because sunlight comes from above.

So sunlight is naturally pleasing to us. It's a natural. We're designed to see light coming down like that. So it tends to be pleasing. So when we set up our studio lights, we always want to be slightly above and angled slightly down. Unless there's a strong reason, a specific stylistic reason why we don't want to do that.