How to Use Hard Lighting to Create a Dramatic Portrait

When was the last time you did not primarily light your scene using a large soft source, such as a soft box or umbrella? Large soft sources easily create a beautiful, wrap-around quality of light. Just pop one up and you have instant “good” light.

Final image: before and after in Lightroom

Though soft light is beautiful and has its place, it represents only one part of the artist’s palette. In this article we are going to dissect the lighting setup for a men’s fashion shoot, and look at how using hard light can add dramatic impact to your photographs.

I think two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler said it best when it came to using hard light:

“Everybody should still work in hard light as well. Not to do it and to say that it has to be all soft light is like throwing away part of the artist’s palette. I think the more variety you can have, the better it will look. To be able to light well in hard light makes the soft lighting a piece of cake, because soft light is very forgiving. Soft light, uncontrolled, is still acceptable photographically. It is really hard for soft light to look bad, but it is really not hard for hard light to look bad.”

The feel the magazine wanted was a dramatic, high-contrast look. One of the problems with soft light is that it can be hard to control and can easily kill the contrast of your scene – especially in small spaces. The location for our shoot just so happened to be one of those small spaces, so I decided that reflectors and honeycomb grids were the best tools for the job.

The shoot was held at a local area builder’s office. The office provided the perfect backdrop for the shoot, but did not offer a lot of room for equipment.

In the pre-planning phase, I chose to use a simple three light setup which included a key light, a fill light and kicker. I had room on camera left to place the main key light, but did not have much room for a kicker opposite camera right; however, there was a window.

As luck had it, the office window overlooked a back patio that had electrical outlets, so I did not have to rely on a battery pack or generator. The only problem was that the patio was a lower in elevation than the office window, so I had to extend my 13′ light stand up to its near maximum height.

To secure the stand, I fastened several 10 pound ankle weights to the legs. Ankle weights are a great and inexpensive alternative to sandbags. The set I use cost about $20 at Walmart, and came with Velcro straps for easy attachment to light stands or boom arms.

Since the strobe was outside the window and placed a distance from the model, I attached a radio slave and set it to full power. (The strobe was rated at 600ws)

Back in the office, I took a meter reading using a light meter with the dome retracted and pointed towards the light. The meter gave me a reading of f/5.6 at ISO 100. I decided the reading would be a good base to build my lighting ratios, so I set my camera to f/5.6 at ISO 100. As far as the shutter speed, I set my camera to 1/160^th of a second because I did not want to capture a lot of ambient light. When using strobes, the shutter speed only controls the brightness of the ambient light.

This first light would act as the kicker light, in the scene.

Position of the kicker light

Test shot of the model with just the kicker light

When lighting with hard lights, you will often find the need to bring up the shadows, since they can easily go black. A large soft light source, placed close to the camera, is great for filling in shadow areas, because it resembles directionless ambient light.

The fill light in our scene was fitted with a medium soft box and placed behind and slightly to the right of the camera.

Position of the fill light

Since most of the elements in the scene were dark brown, including the suit the model was going to wear, I could not set my fill light much lower than my base exposure of f/5.6. If I had set it lower the elements in the shadow areas would quickly go black. I set the fill light to 1 1/3 stop lower than my base exposure, which read f/3.5 on my light meter.

Test shot of the model with both the fill and kicker lights.

The last light I set up was the key (main) light. I placed this light in an open doorway, towards camera left and slightly above the model. I wanted to keep the light on the model and off the walls, so I fitted the light with a 20 degree grid to control the spill.

Position of the key light.

Since most of the scene was dark brown, I decided to have the key light one stop over my camera’s base exposure of f/5.6. I adjusted the light until it read f/8 on my light meter.

Test shot of model with the key light and kicker, no fill. Notice how the shadows go completely black without the fill light.

You may have noticed that the key light on the left side of the model’s face does not appear as bright as the window kicker light on the right side of his face, despite it being one stop brighter (left: f/8 vs right: f/5.6) This is because the kicker is placed more behind the subject, while the key light is placed more towards the side. You might have heard the photography term “the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence”? This is basically that principle in action. Since the kicker light is slightly behind the model, the angle at which the light is being reflected off the skin is causing the highlight to appear brighter.

Positions and settings for key, fill and kicker lights. Notice the camera positioning at the bottom left of the desk.

Shot with all three lights set and in place. Before and after adjustments in Lightroom.

Once the lighting was in place, the model was dressed and the shoot began.

A nice benefit of the positioning of the key and kicker lights was that they pulled double-duty, switching roles whenever the model turned his head. A nice short lighting pattern was created, whichever direction he faced. You can see this in the variations above and below.

Shot with all three lights set and in place. Before and after adjustments in Lightroom.

In closing, I would encourage you to think of creative ways to use and experiment with hard lighting in your photographs. Hard lighting is not just limited to men. The photo below was lit in the same fashion as the photo of the male model. A word of caution, though. Hard light is unforgiving when it comes to wrinkles and blemishes, so you will have to be very careful with your light positioning when your are lighting women.