Half lit face photography tutorial

Good day.

I like to experiment with certain styles of photography to try and capture an image with all the necessary emotions while doing it in a fun and creative way.

One way of changing the style of your photo is to manipulate light and to use it to your advantage. In this short tutorial post I want to show you more or less how you can go about taking a portrait photo in which the subject is only half lit up while the other half is covered in a dark shadow.

The necessary equipment would include a black backdrop, a source of light such as an off camera flash (I took the cheap route and used the flash light on my phone ;) ), a model or anyone with enough patients to not walk out during your trail and error photos and of course a dslr camera. I use a Canon EOS 1300d / 350d.

The look that you will be going for would be similar to the following photo that I took of my younger brother a while back. It helps to have a more photogenic person pose for the photo as this decreases the time it takes to add some emotions to the image.

Notice the blacked out background that can be achieved with a dark backdrop and a shallow depth of field.

The placement of your light source as well as the angle at which you are taking the photo is very important. I have found that moving the source of light forward a bit to about 20° infront of the subject can improve the coverage of light while maintaining a balance between the dark and light side of the subject.

This is an example of how to place the lighting. Keep in mind that this is just a guideline, there are endless possibilities when you start adjusting the positioning of the lighting as well as the subject. Image sourced

When using a darker background you can minimize the amount of editing needed to blend the darker bits of the image with the lighter side of the image.

My first time taking a photo like this was quite strange. I saw a similar project done by another photographer and decide to try it out. At that moment I had no model willing to pose for the photo. I had to improvise and fortunately enough I collected Action Men figurines as a child (A popular action hero that most 90s children would remember). I salvaged one of my figurines from storage and had it set up in a few minutes. The photo was plain and simple, but I had quite a lot of fun capturing it.

My Action Man figurine happy to have his photo taken.

A photo I took of my friends daughter to try and improve the technique.

It is quite a fun project that can be used in many different ways. In the near future I hope to do a similar project with my girlfriend @yogidream.scapes in which we will attempt using colour gels to experiment with different colours in a similar style.

If I were to redo these photos I would definitely try and use better lighting to capture more of the subjects facial features.

For another example of how to use light to your advantage take a look at my Floral photography collection in which I took photos of flowers with a blacked out background.

I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did. Feel free to comment your attempts below.

Have an amazing day.
Joshua Baxter 😊