Technique: Lighting Quiz

I had some down time at a recent church photo shoot. I decided to experiment with different lighting with a cooperative subject (me). I had my remote trigger and a tripod and my lights and backdrop.

Here's a shot of the lighting setup. The main is to camera right, the fill to left, and the background and hair lights back of the left.

I shot a lot of combinations to see the effect of various settings. I have posted six here. I thought it would be fun to quiz you the reader to see if you can match up a light setup with one of these images.

Here are the six setups. See if you can match the setup number with the image letter. The answer key is below.


Setup 1: Main, BG and Hair on...but no Fill
Setup 2: All lights on, main level very close to fill
Setup 3: Hair and BG on, no fill, Main as center "butterfly"
Setup 4: Only main. No Fill, BG or Hair.
Setup 5: Main and Fill switched in intensity.
Setup 6: All lights on. Main and fill differ by about 2 stops.

Study the above images and try to match the image letter with the setup. See if you can learn to see how a shot was lit by looking at the light levels, shadows and other cues.









Answer key: 1-E, 2-A, 3-B, 4-F, 5-D, 6-C.