Apr 19 2010
Lighting Tutorial: Fashion Lighting Made Easy
I did a shoot back in February for one of my regular clients that was more fashion oriented. It was a 3-day shoot here in Montreal at the Blah Blah Studio.
The most important thing was to have consistent lighting throughout the 3 days since the chosen photos would be used for both the cover and chapter openers. Continuity was the key.
So we spent roughly 30 minutes testing various lighting setups. From simple one light to more complex with up to 5 lights. At the end we went with one of the most standard setups around. A simple 2-light setup. Have a look at the diagram…
Both lights were set at roughly 45 degrees about 3 feet away and about a foot above the models’ heads. I put the strobe slightly above their heads to create a small shadow underneath the chin. Both strobes had a 2 x 3 softbox for a soft diffused look. The key for my client was to eliminate as much shadows as possible. So this setup was ideal. My Nikon D300s was set at 1/200 sec at f9 and ISO 100. For this setup, both 400w strobes were at 50% power.
So there you have it! Sometimes it really doesn’t have to be complicated.
Here are a few sample shots from the photo shoot. Note that, a part from a slight curves adjustment in Lightroom, these images haven’t been retouched as of yet so they’re pretty much straight from the camera.
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Thanks Yanik! I love your articles on lighting, as that is an area where I always struggle.
Interesting. I’ve been shooting my fashion shoots this exact way for as long as I can remember.
OMYGOSH!!!
Waited over a year for this, love it!
Thanks
Debbi
The tones all look off in the photos. Was the white bal/color bal set beforehand? Nice shots but the colors look weird.
It is very nice to see, arises with what simple means some very good Fashion Foto!
Thank you!
euGen
Was needing this tutorial badly, thanks for helping with this article
Please make a tutorial to see the differences between flash lighting and continuous lighting in a studio
Thks
This is such a very helpful and informative post specially for newbies like me. I just bought a new camera and I’m on the process of learning some basic shots particularly with different light settings and taking pictures of models just like you did..
I learned a lot from your post and I hope you post some more techniques on photography! 
Sorry. but i don’t like the result(. photography is about light and shadow. and here the setup is simple, so the result is all the same. i thinck the lack of shadow because of the same setting of the both flashes leads to lack of dramatism. I dont want to say you don’t know thet. Probably i am just too advansed for such a simle setup
Thanks! This is so simple set, but does the job!
nice shot.. i hope i could get something like this awesome pic..
thanks for ya help..
Haha. I woke up down today. You\’ve ceehred me up!