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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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Education Field Instructional

Make Your Portrait Subject Face the Light Source For More Flattering Light

Chris Gampat
No Comments
10/21/2016
1 Min read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Conquering Mixed Lighting (2 of 3)ISO 4001-60 sec at f - 2.0

Working with off-camera lighting is a lot easier than most people think. But one thing that many people don’t understand is a very simple concept about lighting: when shooting portraits, it’s often best to make your subject face the light source to deliver a flattering image. Why?

The answer has to do with wraparound lighting.

chris-gampat-the-phoblographer-facing-the-light-in-a-portrai-2-of-2iso-4001-160-sec-at-f-4-0

At a recent workshop I was teaching I was interacting with the audience to pose Bec above. This is the image I was able to produce when she looked towards the light. The light was inside a seven foot umbrella, so angling her face made the light wrap around her face. What this did is made the lighting output overall just look more flattering.

chris-gampat-the-phoblographer-facing-the-light-in-a-portrai-1-of-2iso-4001-160-sec-at-f-4-0

Then when her face was facing away from the light, it cast a harder shadow across her face. It creates an almost Rembrandt type of light, but isn’t as flattering as the previous image.

Seems very small right? Yes, but it’s very effective.

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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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