Three Fantastic Portraits You Can Create With Just One Light

If you follow the work of high-end portrait photographers, you will probably notice them often using complex three- or even four-light setups. And while there are good reasons for using those, you do not need all that complexity to create professional-level images; in fact, just one light will do if you know how to use it. This excellent video tutorial will show you three fantastic portraits you can create using only a single light. 

Coming to you from Eli Infante, this excellent video tutorial will show you three different portraits you can create using only one light. I am a big advocate of using just one light when you are first learning to work with artificial lighting. It is absolutely crucial to learn the fundamental properties of light (things like subject-to-source distance and softness versus hardness) both on a technical and an intuitive level. This is fairly easily done with one light when you can make adjustments and immediately see their effect, but with multiples, it can be overwhelming to try to keep track of everything and figure out which source is causing which effect. Once you master that single one, you will find more complex setups way more approachable. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Infante. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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2 Comments

In all honesty, I think the internet has reached peak "one light setup" tutorial saturation.

The little connector boom arm thing was neat and would consider getting one.

Good commercial for Wescott :) That little arm looked great!