Cheap Lighting With Speedlites Part 3

by Mickey Rountree

Here we’ll take a look at what’s known as beauty or glamour lighting. This is commonly used for fashion and beauty headshots. You’ll see this look almost every time you see a close-up image of a female actress or model on a magazine cover.

The lighting is very simple, just a light source like a beauty dish or softbox centered in front of the model and roughly 45 degrees above and a reflector or another softbox below the models face to fill in shadows. The magic of this light is that it is so shadowless that blemishes and imperfections almost disappear. The disadvantage is that we normally use highlights and shadows to show the shape and dimensions of a face, and we can use shadows to slim a round or wide face. Because there are no shadows, this light can make a face look heavier, so it works best on thin faces. Also without shadows, the structure of the cheek bones disappears and must be added back by heavier than normal makeup contouring. It is important not to raise the light so high that the eyes go dark and don’t have catch lights in them.

So here are a couple of ways to get the look inexpensively using a speedlite. In our first example I’m using a 32″ white shoot through umbrella as my light source. It is just mounted on a plain stand, and I’m shooting with my camera lens right below the edge of the umbrella. The shadows are filled from below with a 22″ silver reflector which is actually being held by the model. Not only is this cheaper than mounting the reflector on a stand, but the model can adjust the angle of the reflector while you watch for the most effect on filling shadows. Below is the lighting diagram and the resulting image. All of the images were shot with a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon 100mm Macro lens.

The next setup is very similar, except the shoot through umbrella has been replaced by the Impact folding beauty dish (see Part 1 for a picture). Once again I’m shooting from just below the edge of the beauty dish. Here is the lighting diagram and final image.

This last shot was done with studio strobes and a specialized reflector call a Triflector that has a lower silver panel and two side silver reflectors that can each be adjusted to fill shadows from below and on each side of the face. Look closely at the catch lights in the eyes and you’ll see the reflections of the 3 panels. This reflector has to be mounted on a sturdy stand. The light was in a 22″ white metal beauty dish which had to be mounted on a heavy duty boom stand. I’ve added two additional lights in softboxes lighting the background so that it would appear lighter. Again here is the lighting diagram and result.

So once again I lit similar shots using $140 for the shoot through umbrella shot, $210 for the folding beauty dish shot or almost $2200 for the studio equipment shots but all of the results are very similar. So don’t be fooled into thinking that you have to have a lot of expensive gear to shoot a good beauty headshot. What’s important is the direction and quality of the light and the knowledge and skill of the photographer.

In part 4 of this series we’ll look at some extremely cheap lighting for portraits.