Hey! This is Daniel Norton and I'm here in my studio
in New York City with Marissa,
and today I'm gonna talk about broad versus
short lighting as they say.
So people always ask me, like, what do you call
the different lighting types, and I'm not a big person
for naming stuff but, I thought this was
an interesting topic because so many people,
like, learn these things, like, this is broad lighting,
this is short lighting, this is butterfly, this is Rembrandt
whatever,
and they just do it.
They don't really have a reason for doing it.
So, in this one I'm gonna, kind of, talk about
the difference between broad and short,
but why I would use each one.
So, define them first so I don't forget.
Is, short lighting is when you're lighting the..
when somebody's, kind of, 3/4
or more profile to you and you're lighting the
short side of the face, so, the face away
from the camera.
Broad lighting is when you light the side that's towards
the camera, so, that's the broad side of the face
and probably there's some video in there that will tell
you that one of them makes people look skinny or
whatever but I don't care about that, like, that's not why
I use it, I use it for the drama that comes
about depending on what you're doing.
So, I'm gonna leave one light consistent here
which is my Profoto B2.
That's just gonna be a hair/separation
light because the background is gonna go
kind of gray, because I'm just
using the softbox here as my key.
So, that's just gonna stay there and, kind of,
give her some separation so it doesn't look too flat.
So we're starting, like I said, with the short light.
This is a Profoto B1X in a two foot softbox.
I've got it basically behind her and lighting
the short side of her face.
So I'll give an icon here
and I'm going to line this thing up.
A little taller with my tripod.
Okay here, good.
That's nice here we go.
Okay so we can see here,
oh yeah that hair light is really on point, I'll
just have to say,
you know, we're lighting the back side of her face.
You've got this, like, beautiful light coming across
you have the shadow area here this definitely adds a lot
more drama to the shot, right, because
basically what you're getting is the, kind of,
more shadow equals more mystery
equals more drama.
So if I wanted something more where the
person is less connected,
or that there's something mysterious about
them, this is the type of light that I would
want to use.
I don't want to reveal all of them, right?
So all that shadows coming, and because it is kind of
coming from the back and coming
towards us, it'll show also detail in
clothing if you had that,
in this case we're shooting just a simple dress,
so we don't have that, but you can see in the face
how nice that is.
Let me do a couple more because
you get paid by the frame.
Good, the shoulders back, good,
turn slightly this way.
now remember this.. it's important that
this works like this,
and not like if she was staring right at me,
because that would simply be bad, right,
because that's not gonna work there.
You'd use a different lighting thing
for that if you want to move there.
This is just gonna create, kind of, oddball
light here, so this really is for, like,
more of a three-quarter type shot.
So let's go to, actually leave the bad picture up,
we should leave the bad picture up.
Let's do one more good one, yeah.
Marissa doesn't like me to leave bad pictures.
There we go, all right, we didn't leave
the bad picture, we're good.
Alright, so, let's go to broad lighting.
So, I'm gonna use the same box I'm
gonna move it to the other side.
She's gonna look the same direction
she was looking before, right, and what
I'm gonna do is I'm gonna light
this side of her face that's towards the camera,
a.k.a the broad side.
So let's see what we got there.
Take a half a step this way,
back a little bit okay.
That's it the hokey pokey, right?
Is that not the hokey pokey?
Alright, so, we can see here that now
we're revealing this whole side of her face,
it's clean it's fresh, right?
It's all.. I mean there's shadow but it's
away from us.
So we're not really you know hiding
anything on her versus the short side
where we are.
So let's take a quick couple like this.
Now this one's a little more forgiving
if she starts to work towards the camera.
Like here now you can go straight on,
right, because now the lights more or less
in front of her right,
so if you are going to have some variations
where she's gonna look towards the camera,
this may be a better lighting setup because it
gives you that that option.
If you're working with that
short lighting you're really good to think
about where you're gonna have the model turn.
So let's do a few more where you're
turned off this way
Last one so that's basically your broad
lighting and your short lighting
Cool, cool, cool.
So when you're learning I guess it's fine to
have like things in your pocket,
like this is this technique,
this is that technique,
but remember just having the
technique doesn't do anything,
what it does is just tells
you how to put the lights not why
and what we really wanna do as
photographers is think about why we're
doing what we're doing.
So whether you want to call it broad light
or short light or whatever you want to do.
Just think about why you're lighting
somebody and what effect is gonna give
to you.
I'll put Marissa's information in the description
so you guys can follow her.
Follow me @DanielNortonPhotographer.
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and I'll see you next time OnSet.