My successful experiment with short lighting

[Trevor Ash]

There haven't been a lot of posts here lately and I thought I'd share my latest experiment. I always feel I understand lighting well when looking at photographs but it sure is different when you try to actually do it yourself!!! What you think you understand you find out it's not so easy or not as well understood.

Now, I wanted to practice shooting a portrait using short lighting. I was concerned with pose AND lighting. These are all self portraits so I hope you'll understand why some are off center or what not. It's kind of hard to get in the right spot when you're not looking through the viewfinder.

Originally, I planned on setting up a flash behind an umbrella as a single light source for my lighting. I went to my large living room where I planned to shoot and held up my hand to see what the lighting was like. I was very surprised to see quite a bit of soft shadow and contrast wrapping around my fingers and hand. I decided to take out my light meter and see just how much contrast I was dealing with with the natural lighting. I took one reading with the dome pointed at where I though the light was coming from (reflected off a very large/tall wall) and took another reading facing the same direction but with my hand shading the dome. The difference was almost 1.5 stops and I thought that would be good enough for my experiment so I decided not to use the flash at all.

From there on out, I just set my exposure to the unshaded reading and started taking shots while trying to remember how to do a masculine head and shoulders pose and getting the short lighting on my face.

This is going to sound silly, but for whatever reason I didn't quite "get" the lighting until the last couple shots I took. All of a sudden it "clicked". For some reason I was too busy worrying only about camera position relative to the light when I should have been concerned about my FACE position relative to the light, and then rotating the camera about my face (or the direction I was facing) to determine how much of the broad side of my face should show.

Anyway, even something as simple as short lighting proved a very good learning experiment for me. I understand this stuff in my head but putting it in practice is so much different. I highly suggest you all try these experiments if you don't already. They're very satisfying and generate confidence.

I've attached two images. The first image shows every single one of my attempts while trying to figure out the lighting and pose. As you can see, I didn't really figure out either of them until the last few shots and even then I had to go through a little trial and error to get things right.

In the final photo, I definetely felt "awkward" but as you can see in the result it looks very natural.

Oh, don't ask about my shaving problems. I HATE shaving I realize that this portrait could be improved by introducing some catch lights into the eyes and better dealing with background elements, (it's out of focus) etc.. But I am very pleased with what I've learned.

I hope it's not immediately obvious but there's plenty of PS work done on the final image you see.....I look so much younger! haha.

[Trevor Ash]

I was studying things a little more looking for another lighting setup to practice and I've come to realize that the lighting in this photo probably represents split lighting much more than short lighting. I still like the photo though