DreamDesign
Vue Explorations

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Classic Studio Lighting

When setting up your lighting, particularly for still life and indoor scenes, give your images an extra edge by understanding classic studio lighting setups.

To understand lighting positions, it helps to imagine a crosshairs diagram emanating from around the subject. Looking down from overhead, the diagram looks like this: A similar diagram would be imagined if looking from a front view, to achieve understanding of overhead and lowered lighting positions. A single light in any one of these classic positions will yield a satisfactory result; which position will depend on the effect you aim to achieve. Here are some samples of single-lamp lighting. Front Lighting With frontal lighting, the single lamp is positioned very near to the camera's position. Overhead Lighting The overhead position can be anywhere higher than the camera's position. I've shown it here from the front, but it can also be quarter, side or back overhead. Backlighting A back light can add a dramatic effect to a subject. It is often used to highlight edges of hair on a human model. Light from Below Under light can be positioned anywhere lower than the camera's position. It can be front, quarter, side or back positioned. Light Quarter West Quarter lighting is very flattering for human faces. Light Quarter East Quarter lighting is very flattering for human faces. Light Side West Strong side lighting is another method for adding drama. Once you understand the basic imaginary diagram for the lamp positions, you can begin to combine two and three (or more) lights together as best suits your particular subject. Here are samples of combination double and triple lamp lighting. Lights (2) Quarter-East Side-West Notice how the shapes of objects are being molded by the light and shadow. Lights (3) Quarter-East Side-West Back While the object shapes are nicely defined, the shadows are now beginning to be washed-out and less definitive. I have demonstrated these setups with level lighting -- i.e. the lamps are vertically level with the camera -- with the exception of the overhead and underneath samples. All positions can be used level, overhead or underneath, as desired. All lights shown here used a Vue setting of 100 power and an incandescent color tint.