Lighting a beauty shot - The Lighting Series #6

This looks simple, but it’s a bit more complex than you think. When you are creating images that are intended for high-end retouching, you need to pay particular attention to creating a defined but actually relatively flat illumination.

Setup

A beauty shoot can sometimes be very simple; on other occasions, it’s more like product photography. This photo falls into the second category.

The main light is a beauty dish, which has been supplemented by a strip light for the hair. For the background, there’s a very gentle light with a normal reflector. To lighten the shadows, there was a large parabolic umbrella.

The choice of light shapers is not really critical here; it’s more about creating clear and clean light-shadow transitions and not creating too-deep shadows in the image.

We want to have a definition everywhere: in the highlights and in the shadows.

Gear

A white Beauty dish with a diffuser on a 1000Ws monoblock
A strip light on a 1000Ws monoblock
Normal reflector with a 500Ws monoblock
200cm parabolic umbrella on a 1000Ws monoblock

Individual light sources

: Key Light
The main light used here is a beauty dish, as it gives a relatively soft light but does not soften the shadows. You need to pay particular attention to the nasal shadow here as it should not protrude above the nasolabial fold and neither should it go up or over the lower lip.

: Hair Light
The main light used here is a beauty dish, as it gives a relatively soft light but does not soften the shadows. You need to pay particular attention to the nasal shadow here as it should not protrude above the nasolabial fold and neither should it go up or over the lower lip.

: Background Light
This is a gentle light that should complement your model’s skin tone. In this instance, the colour was selected in post-processing but you could just as easily use a gel and do it in-camera.

: Fill light
If the shadows are too dark, for example under the chin and on the cheek, use a large, unobtrusive brightener. The parabolic umbrella is perfect; used subtly it doesn’t register as a new light source.

Downloads

For the pictures in the article, we used the light simulation Set.A.Light 3D. You can download the lighting setup and try everything for yourself.

If you’ve never worked with Set.a.Light before, you should give it a try! There is also a free demo version on the website, which you can use to open our set