Many photographers who have a small studio setup often don’t have the large amount of equipment needed to create dynamic studio portraits that require 3-4 strobes. In many cases, people may have just 2 or even only 1 light to work with. In addition, the classical styled portrait going back to the early days in photography was always shot with just one light because, if you were working outdoors in natural light, then you would only have one light source to work with anyway. So in this post I am going to teach you how to shoot classical portraits using just one studio light, whilst offering you 5 different lighting styles you can setup quickly.
For this tutorial I am going to use one of my Elinchrom 600W/S studio strobes and attach it to a small, inexpensive softbox made by Impact that is only 12″ x 16″ in size. You can see my setup in the photos below:

I am using a small sized softbox because it will emit a more controlled, and narrower beam of light for portraits, with greater light fall-off so that the light does not extend much past the head and upper torso of the subject or onto the backdrop itself.
It is not necessary to always use a small softbox like this though. You can use larger softboxes or umbrellas if you like, but they will offer less control of the direction of the light when you are trying to create a specific lighting effect for portraits. With a larger beam of light you will also end up with more light spreading onto the backdrop. In my examples below you will see there is very little light spill on the backdrop at all. Below is also a front view of the softbox showing the small area of fabric that diffuses the light and this is why the beam will be nice and controlled when the light is emitted:

The image below shows you the back of the flash head and a Yongnuo RF-603 wireless radio trigger that I am using to fire the flash. The RF-603 is a transceiver. This means it can act as either a transmitter or a receiver. In this case I have set it to act as a receiver and connected it to my Elinchrom strobe as a trigger using a small PC Sync cable connected to the RF-603. The PC Sync cable also has a 3.5mm plug on the other side to plug it directly it into my Elinchrom strobe. Then I have a second one of these transceiver units which I mount on top of my camera’s hot-shoe and this one acts as the transmitter that then signals to the receiver to fire the strobe when I release the shutter. If you would like to read more about the triggers I am using you can read my other post here titled “The Best Value For Your Money On Radio Triggers”

As for my overall studio setup, you can see it is a very simple setup in the photo below. I am using a stool which is about 27″ (70cm) high that allows the subject to sit at a height that allows me to stand up and shoot from slightly above the subject’s head:

I am using a 9.0′ wide roll of solid charcoal gray Savage brand studio paper as my backdrop. It is not necessary for it to be this wide though for a single portrait. A 6.0′ wide backdrop would actually be enough. I often buy 9′ rolls of studio paper and cut them down to about 5.5′-6.0′ wide for portrait purposes since a smaller roll of paper is easier to work with when putting it up and down. Also, since I am only planning on shooting the upper half of the subject’s torso, I don’t need to run my backdrop all the way down to the floor and risk damaging the paper or getting it dirty. If you would like more information about ideal studio backdrop sizes for different types of portraits then you can read my other post “How Much Space Do You Need To Setup A Photography Studio?“.
On the left I am using a small, inexpensive, battery powered LED video light which has 160 small LED bulbs in it to light up the subject while I am shooting so that I can see what I am doing. It also helps to provide some light so that I can more easily auto-focus my camera. This light will have no effect on my portraits at all as you will see in my shots below since the light output, although it appears bright, is relatively very weak when shooting with a fast shutter speed, low ISO, and narrow aperture setting. I am shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon 24-70mm F/2.8 lens at F/8, 1/125th shutter speed, and ISO 100. OK, now that we have covered the equipment setup, let’s get started.
1 – For my first light setup I am going to create what is known as a Rembrandt Light. The Rembrandt Light effect is where the far side of the face (opposite to where the light is positioned) is mainly in darkness, but there is still a small triangle of light on the cheek that appears on the darker side of the face so that the far side of the face isn’t in complete relative darkness. This is done by placing your camera at around 6:00 and the light at about either 4:30 or 7:30 to the camera, which is either slightly to the left or right of the camera at about 35-45 degrees to one side. In my case, I placed my light to the right of the camera. The light should also be placed about 1′ above the subject’s head and the subject should be facing either straight forward to the camera and/or turned just a bit towards the light. You can see the result of the Rembrandt Light setup below:

2 – In this second setup I have created what is known as a Split Light. What this means is that you basically have the opposite side of the face in almost total darkness. In this case I placed the light at about 3:30 to the camera at 6:00 or at about 90 degrees to the right of the camera and positioned it just slightly in front of the subject. This lights up the side of the face closest to the light and places the opposite side of the face into darkness where the light is not able to reach. This creates a very moody and atmospheric looking portrait as you can see in the example below.

3- Setup number three is what’s known as a Broad Light. It is shot by keeping the light in the same Rembrandt Light position, but the subject turns her torso away from the light and faces her body in the opposite direction of the light, but then the subject looks back at the camera. This allows the light to broadly fill the face and much of the body. You still get a bit of the same Rembrandt Light triangular shadow on the opposite cheek. If her face was pointed more towards the light though then you would have less shadow on the far side of the face as well.

4 – The fourth setup is called a Butterfly Light and is one I really like. It is often used for fashion photography as the light, still using just the one light, fills most of the face fairly evenly. The light is positioned directly in front of the camera, but raised high above. What this does is create a shadow under the nose that looks like the shape of a butterfly. It also accentuates the lines in the face by placing shadows below the curves of the face. You can see in the photo below how it brings out the lines in her cheeks when she smiles with shadows under her cheeks. It also creates a nice shadow under the chin, but the shadow on the neck can be a bit heavy in some cases.

5- Lastly, we have our Loop Light setup. This again puts the light in the Rembrandt position, but you raise the light much higher than you normally would for a Rembrandt Light. The subject again faces forward like in a Rembrandt Light position, but because of the height of the light you get a looping shadow on the side and below the bottom of the nose on the side of the face opposite to the light.

Below you can see a close-up of the shadow in a Loop Light setup.

In conclusion, in 3 of the setups the light is in the same position more or less at about 35-45 degrees to one side of the camera. Then one setup has the light directly in front of the camera and the other setup has the light directly to the side of the subject.
Please note that with all these setups I have demonstrated that you are welcome to use a reflector or a bounce if you prefer to maximize the light being emitted from your single light source and bounce/reflect a bit of that light back onto the subject from the subject’s dark side. In the case of this tutorial, I chose not to use a bounce because I wanted to show you exactly what the effect of a single light setup would be like for each example. But using a bounce will obviously reduce a bit of some of the harsher shadows you see here. In some cases though, like the Split Light setup, you may not want to use a bounce as you may prefer the atmospheric effect of keeping one side of the face in relative darkness.
In the future, I will be publishing another article which shows you other examples of the Rembrandt setup again, but I will be adding in 2 additional lights for both a back light/hair light on the subject, as well as some light for a bit of glow and gradient on the backdrop. Check back again for my upcoming post or click here to subscribe to this blog to receive email notifications on future blog posts.
If you have any questions on any of the above setups or techniques then please feel free to post your questions and comments below as always.
*UPDATE #1 / 13-May-14* – I just posted a follow up article to this post which expands on the Rembrandt Light technique called “How To Setup Rembrandt Lighting For Portraits“. You can read that article by clicking here.