Light Study: Looking at the Catchlights

When you’re ready to start learning about lighting your photographs, there’s no better place to start than Strobist. It’s a lot of info, and it can be a bit daunting… but once you digest it all you’ll have a much better understanding of lighting.

One of the key principals I got out of Strobist is that its important to understand how lights are at work in a picture – and then learn to reverse engineer and reconstruct that light. David Hobby saves this for near the end of Lighting 101, because you need to understand a bit about lights for this to work.

I find myself doing this often when I’m looking at the work of other photographers. It’s really a challenge when you start looking at on location, Strobist-inspired shots. But its surprisingly simple when you’re looking at your average studio photographer. As a case in point, let’s look at a couple shots from the portfolio at a photography studio in Manhattan.

The secret here, as in most pictures, lies in the eyes. Look at the full size image of the picture, and you’ll notice two catchlights in the model’s eyes. If the light comes from the frontal arc, and the model is looking towards the camera, then the light is going to create a reflection in her eye (a catchlight).

There’s a large, squarish catchlight in the upper left portion of her eye. This suggests a large softbox, coming from camera left. You can then confirm this with some other information in the picture. For example, there’s a highlight on the left side of her forehead and a slight shadow under her chin going to the right. Both of these are consistent with a light coming from above and to camera left.

The second, smaller catch light is a fill light. It’s probably a little bit to camera right. Hard to say if there’s a modifier attached. It seems odd to fire a straight strobe at a model in a portrait like this… but maybe it’s a roundish attachment (like a beauty dish)? Regardless, the purpose of this second light is to fill in the shadows caused by the main light (the softbox on camera left). Without this fill light, the shadow under her chin and the right side of her face would be much darker.

The difference a fill light makes can be seen in this second picture (from the same portfolio). In this case, there’s only one catch light in the models eye. Again, it’s a large, squarish catch light, this time in the upper right portion of his eye. It’s a similar lighting pattern as the previous picture, but flipped. Now, there’s a large softbox up and to camera right.

There is, however, no fill light. On the one hand, you’ll notice the absence of a second catchlight. But, there’s also a deep shadow on the left and lower portions of his face. The main ilght is blocked in part by the models nose and chin, creating this shadow.

Notice the highlight on the top of his head, too. This is a dead giveaway of a hair light – a small light pointing down on the model from slightly behind him. And there’s a nice glow on the background, so there’s also probably a light on the background.

What’s interesting here is the consistency in the lighting used by the photographer. Look through the portfolio, and almost every picture has a lighting scheme like the first model. I’ve noticed this a lot with “discount” photographers that offer cheap headshot services. The pictures are nice, but you’re headshot is going to be lit more or less the same as everyone elses…

Effective? Yes. Creative? No. But, when you’re trying to barrel through a lot of pictures in a small amount of time, sometimes efficiency is more important than creativity (think school portraits).