So what we're going to have a look at now some free light techniques, we're gonna look at a free light standard a free light hair light, we'll look at some sports lighting, a free light corporate shot, and a free light beauty shot. So it gets really interesting. Now the more lights we add in, the more creative we can get, or the more interest in the variations become. So let's have a look of the free light section. So here we've got a simple free light setup. This is pretty traditional, sort of portrait photography look.

So as you can see, what we've got here is we've got our main light, we've got to fill light, and we've got a rim light coming over the shoulder. And that's going to give us a pretty standard looking portrait. Remember, all of the setups with distances and power ratios are included in the resources section. So we can see here, we've got a nice bit of may get a little bit of fell and we've got that rim Coming out of the shoulder. This is pretty much my standard lighting when I'm doing portrait headshots in the studio. This is my go to light and it works with males it works with females, I might change the brightness of the fill light, sometimes we'll take that down to create a little bit more drama with the men with the ladies are taking up so he just gives a little bit of shape but fills in all the textures and any roughness in the skin.

The ladies really appreciate that. So that would be how I was set that up. Now we've got the free light with a hair light, size variation on the theme. all we've done is we've changed the highlight to the back again. And now we've got a pretty straightforward again, corporate shot and if you shoot video production, this is a good lighting system to use and it's often used in the film industry. I always prefer to shoot with rim because I come from a Photography background and a preferred light for him rather than using a hairline.

So if we look at the differences between the two, that's a rim comes over the side of the face and the shoulder, these a little bit of a hard shadow there. And then we have the hairline coming over there. And then obviously, that creates a little bit more definition along the background. Well, that's pretty standard free light stuff gets you going, and it's going to get those portraits looking good. So now we've got a free light with backgrounds. Let's just have a look at that.

What have we done, we've just put a spot on the background. So we've got a spot in the background, a main and a fill, pretty straightforward stuff. This is another light setup I often use with corporate shots because with the men especially it's a very powerful look. And we bring that back we can see we've got the highlight on this side and Dark on this side. Now, a little tip for you, when you light on the main after shadow on that side, and when you have the shadow here, that's where you add your spotlight. Typically you can reverse it, but typically that's how you do it because what that's going to do is is going to bring out the shadow here.

And this is going to bring out the highlights on this side. So you're creating contrast natural contrast across the image when you shoot like this. Now this is free light sports lighting. This is very popular. I've seen a lot of photographers using this technique recently. And it's very good it for bringing out body contour and body shape.

So use this wisely if you've got a subject that this is not going to flatter, I wouldn't use it. So let's have a look at the lighting on this because start to get a little bit interesting. So we've got the beauty dish on the face. We got the beauty dish on the face because we're trying to get this light, we're trying to get this light coming down the face. So we're lighting up the bridge and it's lighting up the nose. And it's just creating a little bit of light under the eyes here, so it's, it's quite dramatic.

And then we've got to strip boxes either side. And you'll notice I've took the diffusion panels completely out of the strip boxes they're shooting there, why have I done that because I need the power and need the output. And I need some wrap around the edge of the subject. And these are the lights that are really given the edge and give me that real sort of powerful look. So if we look at that, now we've got the light from the rim here on this side and the light here. We've got it coming down the body so it's it's highlighting outlining is coming through.

Create some Tetris texture across the front separating us from the background. That's a very typical really powerful sports studio lighting setup. Now what's interesting, very interesting is we go to next one. And this is a free light commercial or corporate lighting setup. And let's just have a quick look at the lighting because this gets interesting. Okay, so what have we done?

The only variation really, is we've put some grids, we put our diffusers back in, and we've put some grids into light boxes. Now the reason we've done that is you notice we've got a black floor and a black background to create a real trauma. The reason we've done that is we don't want quite as much rim on the edge of the subject and the other thing is as well when we look at the light positions as they come around. Okay, so I've changed flow color. So when we look at what The lights are now here and here. They're actually a little bit further around a little bit more wrap than we had on the previous shot.

And what that means is we've got a softer wrap, look at the edges here and compare it to this is very strong on the sports very dynamic, but on the commercial or the corporate, free light set up for like commercial, all we want is a little bit there. And again, we're getting the beauty dish giving us that nice fall off into the body. But we're getting this separation on the edges, but it's not strongest, nice dynamic. So here we have a beauty on why this is a standard white background beauty shop. used by a lot of magazines and a lot of top photographers. It's a really simple lighting setup.

So let's have a look. Look at this. So what have we got here? Well, what we've got is key thing here is we've got two reflective umbrellas which are blowing lots of light onto the background. And the key thing is when you're blowing out the background is making sure your subject is far enough forward, that we don't get lots of rap coming on the skin. So we don't want to get loads and loads of wrap around the edge of the skin.

We want the white to be white, but not actually bouncing the light back onto the subject. And then we've got two flags and this is very, very, very important. These two flags are stopping. If you have a look here. You can see what a shadow is. These are stopping the light hitting our subject.

So we're not lighting the subject with our two background lights. So now what we've got is we've got our beauty dish at the standard duty, this sort of height, maybe a little bit lower than normal because we want To put a little bit of light into the body, so we've got a little bit of butterfly lighting going on the front of the face. And that is the result of all of that. So quite strong, quite powerful, quite compelling. So that's a free light setup, a beauty shop with a really strong emphasis on the face. Now if we wanted to light a bit more of a subject up, we probably use a large light source, but I would probably want to be using a four light setup anyway.

So beauty on white, free light set up really simple. Download the PDFs, all the floor plans, all the measurements, all the powers of the ratings of your flashes are going to be there, what type of diffusers, what the camera was set up. Everything's going to be there. You can then take that, go and duplicate that in your own studio space.