Hair light in portrait photographs
23.2.2009  |   Add comment   |   Read comments (1)  |  Permalink
Last week I went to pickup a second Canon Speedlite 430EX II strobe and a radio receiver (FlashWaves), so that I could use it to light the background. So yesterday I got a chance to test it out and do little Strobism for the first time with two strobes.

The first thing I noticed was, that even though I lit the background I still wasn't happy with dark hair of my wife. There just wasn't enough of seperation. So I decided to use the second strobe as a hairlight and let the key and ambient light deal with lighting the background. I placed the hairlight high above and from behind my wife to the camera right.

The strobe's power was still set to 1/4 power, so no wonder the hair was over-exposed. I tried until I noticed the 1/32 power was enough to bring some background seperation and to make her hair more lively.

By hairlight I mean a light that comes from behind the model from above, which is is either modified by a snoot or sometimes even fired away bare without any light modifiers.

But what is the meaning of a hair light? With hair light, you bring a little seperation for your model's dark side which is not exposed to the key-light. You can also use a reflector, but using a hair light makes a tremendous improvement to your portrait photography.

Below is a picture of my wife's portrait I did without the hair light. For many, this is pretty good and I would also be happy with just one strobe. The difference can be seen when the hair light is added into the equation. In this picture, the camera right portion of the image is dull and dark. This is fine if you're after this effect, but I wanted to bring out the details in her hair.



Next image shows you how hair light effect the portrait without the key-light. The power on the hair light was 1/32. You don't want to add too much of light, because overexposed hairlight just doesn't look natural.



As you can see, the hair light in my case also affects her shoulders, bringing some three dimensional feel to the portrait. Lets have a look how the hair light and the key-light look together.



If you compare this and the first portrait the difference is huge. It just look so well that I have decided to give up on the background light until I get a third strobe to dedicate it for background lighting.

Setup of the portrait above is not much:

2 x Speedlite 430EX
2 x light stands
2 x radio receivers (you could also use optical slaves or synch cords)
1 x radio transmitter

Below is a picture of the setup of the above portrait. As you can see, you can get great results in your living room as well.
Jamie Willmott said...

You could use a reflector, just out of shot, to give you some light on the hair. This would free up your other strobe for the background.