There are times when you may want to have a more glamorous look to your portrait. Backlight can give a nice, approachable feel to an image and help give it dimension. Some backlight glamour is very strong, with blown out hair and edges. I prefer a more subtle look unless I want an ‘effect’ look to the image.

This shot of Lynne is created with three lights. Two of them are providing backlight and one is providing the front, or main light. It is a simple setup, one that can be done with studio or speedlights with consistent results.

I am using very small matching umbrellas here. they are 22″ soft white umbrellas and are about two feet from Lynne. They are matched for height and angle as well as distance. I wanted the light to be even across the back.

For this shot they are mounted on medium Bogen stands, and angled down at about 30% to have a little top feel to the light. They are about 20 inches above her (bottom of umbrella to head).

The front light is a beauty dish, this one is my old Norman dish which I love. I may buy a new one to have a matched pair, but this thing is really so fun, showing 20 years of dings, tape, marks and all kinds of ‘work’ marks. I have it about 3 feet from Lynne and slightly above the camera (10 inches or so). In this case, it is well between the lens and Lynne, so I am shooting under it. It is mounted on a Bogen Boom arm to keep the stands out of my way.

The power to all lights are equal. The meter gives me f8 from the front light, f8 from each of the backlights. The way I meter is to take a reading from the front light blocking the side light from any contamination of the pure reading (in this case not a big problem cause the backlights are behind her). I then take a reading of the backlights as it falls on the model. In other words, I turn my Minolta Flash Meter toward them and measure the light falling on her as though they were main lights. I will take a final reading from the subject toward the lens with all flashes firing to make sure I am not getting anything I was not expecting.

All of these lights are now giving me f8 and that means they are even. So why does the backlight work to show the light. It is because they are hitting Lynne at an angle and her skin and dress start to catch the light and reflect it toward the camera. Do you see how it highlights her neck and chin from the edge forward? That edge is catching the backlight at an angle to throw it right into the lens. It seems brighter, and essentially it is.

Remember also that my main light is only 3ft from her, so it is already falling off as it clears her shoulders. The backlight is catching the receding light and kicking it back up.

The dark area under her right cheek is from the natural area caused from her hair blocking the backlight, the contrast is because the main light (and only light seen in this area) is the beauty dish. Beauty dishes have a bit more contrast and less ‘wrap’ than umbrellas.

The lens I am using here is the 100mm, f2.8 Canon USM. I love this lens for its sharpness and blazing fast focus. In the studio I will more than likely have this lens or my Canon 80-200MM L Zoom (yes, 80-200mmL - it is an older model.)

I am also using a compendium lens shade to keep any flare off of the lens. A compendium hood looks like the bellows of a view camera. I think they are the most consistently reliable flare protection, and it folds flat for easy stowing in my already overloaded bag.

You will also notice in the lighting diagram that I am using a shiny board under her chin. It is adding some kick up, but I have it lower than normal so that it doesn’t wipe out the contrast of the beauty dish. We used to finesse these things with Polaroid (RIP), but today I will shoot tethered whenever I can, or rely on the zoom tool on the camera LCD screen to see the subtle changes. I don’t have that much faith in the screen on the back of the camera for exposure and such, so I use this only when I cannot see it on my laptop. I have found that the contrast on that little screen is far more than what is rendered in the capture.

I shot the image in Raw and processed it normally. This image has been Photoshopped to include some skin retouching, a Curves adjustment for a little added contrast and a softness filter applied at 50%. I also slightly burned in the texture on the lighter part of the dress… 10% or so.

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To do this shot with speedlights would be very easy. I would recommend the use of a smaller beauty dish from the front, or possibly a small softbox. The back, side lights could remain small umbrellas. I would make sure that the fill cards were very tight to compensate for the somewhat smaller throw of the speedlights in umbrellas. Many photographers are adding additional speedlights to their aresenal, and I recommend that as well. Modern flashes are quite expensive with all the ETTL and other technology built in. For a shot like this you don’t need that, so older, manual flashes could be used. Ebay or Craigslist could net you a great find. A friend of mine picked up 2 Nikon SB600’s for $120 off Craigslist… so be diligent. I believe you can still get the Vivitar 285HV for under a hundred bucks at Amazon, at least at the time of this writing.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If there is something special you would like to see, please contact me by email from the contact page.