Dust off your umbrellas and create stunning portraits with these unusual set ups

The humble lighting umbrella often gets a bad rap. It’s typically the modifier most of us start using when we first get into shooting with off-camera flash. However, it quickly gets shoved to the back of the cupboard in favour of more glamorous beauty dishes and soft boxes.

But don’t be put off using umbrellas! They are a trusty, lightweight modifier with heaps of uses. And as Lindsay Adler shows in this video for Adorama, they don’t have to be boring! Let’s deconstruct her umbrella setups.

Setup 1: Overhead umbrella for dramatic light

This is a twist on the classic butterfly lighting. However, the light is placed a little more horizontally and a little bit higher to the subject. It’s a subtle difference, and you do have to be careful not to get too many dark shadows on the subject’s face. To avoid this, just ask your subject to raise their chin a little.

It gives a little bit more drama to the classic butterfly set up, and emphasizes bone structure especially cheekbones. And who doesn’t like cheekbones? It also emphasizes detail and texture in clothing so is particularly nice for fashion shoots, and it works well in black and white due to the high contrast.

Setup 2: Closed umbrella for controlled light spill

To achieve this look, Lindsay uses two lights. The main light is a silver deep umbrella which she keeps partially closed. This reduces light spread, preventing it from hitting the background, and so giving you greater control over the light. You do have to increase the power of the light to counter the loss of light.

The best and worst thing about umbrellas is that they tend to send light out at all angles, so this is one easy way to help control that spread. Obviously it won’t be as controlled as a gridded softbox, but that’s also part of the charm of an umbrella.

The second light is a background light and for this, Lindsay uses a small shoot-through umbrella to create a gradient effect on the background. This helps give the image more depth, separating the subject. Adding a silver bounce reflector further enhances the separation on the subject’s jawline and helps create more depth in black-and-white shots.

Setup 3: Gradient colours using umbrellas and gels

For the final set-up, Linsay was inspired by the subject’s dress and went for a mix of multiple umbrellas with coloured gels. The umbrellas are used in different ways: background light, rim light, fill light, and main light. Umbrellas do take up a fair bit of space, so for this one, you’ll have to be shooting in a decent-sized space.

Lindsay adds blue, teal and green gels to create a vibrant and colourful gradient effect that blends across the background. It’s a very clever use of multiple umbrellas, and she demonstrates how she builds up the effect, layer by layer.

The key light is that medium silver umbrella again, which lights the subject but retains deep shadows. This is important so that the shadows don’t become too watered down when you add the rest of the lights.

If you want colours to show up on a seamless background, then grey is the best colour to choose. Lindsay begins the gradient on the background with a large umbrella with diffusion and blue gel at the top corner of the background. By placing the light so high, you ensure that the spread of blue light won’t be even, which is important for the next part of the gradient.

The next lights have two jobs: to act as rim lights and to create a green colour on the background. To change the blend of the lights, simply change up the power settings on the lights until you have the colour balance that you want.

Finally, Lindsay adds a large umbrella with a teal gel to use as a fill light on the subject’s shadow side of the face. This final light helps blend all the others together. In post you can then play with the colours more, changing the white balance or with a colour grade.

The results of all these setups are quite stunning and show us just how versatile (and cheap!) an umbrella can be! There’s no limit to what you can create with a few umbrellas.

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