This is the second in our series of lighting ideas for photographers. You might also want to check out last week’s post on Low Key Lighting.

Three point lighting is a technique which gives away exactly what it is in it’s name……. lighting with three lights!

The magic triangle

To create your ‘magic triangle of lighting you’re going to utilise your lights in three different ways..

1. The Key Light

The (as it name might suggest) is your main light. It can be a strobe or the sun. Obviously the overall look of your image is going to be influenced greatly by this light. Keep an eye on the strength, colour and angle. For the image above our key light is actually subdued and as we’re shooting in the shade (cheating I know).

By shooting in the shade we’ve eliminated one of the factors that might cause us trouble and that’s the angle of the key light. What it does mean is that to balance things out we must then have a fill light that acts in a similar way…..

2. The Fill Light

You’d use your fill light very much like you’d use a reflector, filling in the shaded areas. This light is normally half the strength of your Key Light to keep some shape to your subject.

In terms of positioning the fill light is normally positioned about 90 degrees from your key light whilst still illuminating the front of your subject.

For our example we had a diffuse Key Light so to even things out we used a Lightsphere on top of a strobe.

3. The Back Light

A.K.A. rim light, shoulder light or even a hair light. Guess where this light goes?

This light does work especially well if it’s lined up behind the subject with the Fill light.

But again as you might tell from our example we broke we rules and used it directly behind the subject. This was mainly due to the fact that we had two diffuse lights and we wanted to add some shape to the subject.

The Back light is a nice way to bring the subject away from a background and add extra definition to the contours.

Resources

Here’s a few sites you might want to have a look at…

Three-Point Lighting Simulator by www.mediacollege.com.

Basic 3 Point Lighting by Andrew Whitehurst

Loads of diagrams – if you like that sort of thing!

Three Point Lighting model & shadow emulation from Photoshop – if you want to cheat!