3 Simple Steps to Dramatic Portrait Lighting

Photo taken by Greg Stewart at a JP Stones workshop.

I took this photo a few weeks ago with some clients as part of the Aztec Workshops here in Mexico.

This was a tricky photo as we were aiming for a few things: dramatic portrait lighting, consistent environmental lighting and a pleasing quality of light across the face. The photo was based on the ‘sun worshiping’ ritual to the deity Huitzilopochtli. This practice is part of the Aztec religion, and I wanted to show it’s cultural importance.

Step 1: Logically, the environmental context should place the sun in directly above the subject. But as we were aiming for more dramatic portrait lighting, providing flat light on the face was not a good option. So I decided to place the key light to the right instead, placing a large octagon there so that the light was still flattering and the catchlights in the eyes very wide.

Step 2: I then placed a reflector camera-left to keep the shadows down. This simple setup gave us a good quality of light on the subject’ face.

Step 3: We also wanted to backlight the feathers – as this would increase the drama. I used a bare speed-light behind the subject.

That’s it! I then opened up the aperture on my 50mm lens to separate the subject from the background vegetation and we snapped away until we got a fairly symmetrical pose. I did not want a perfect symmetry as this makes photos look overly staged.