How to Create Dramatic Headshots With Three Lights, One Light at a Time

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How to Light Headshots: Five Tips from Peter Hurley

When it comes to headshots, there is perhaps no better source of information and guidance than the man who has made an empire out of the practice. In this five minute video on the, Peter Hurley quickly breaks down his favorite tips to light the perfect headshot.

Tip 1: Peters's most important tip comes from a quote by American Poet Walt Whitman who once said, "Keep your face always toward the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you." Hurley took this to heart since this is a huge deal for photographers when they want to avoid side lighting to ensure subjects' faces are properly lit and allow the camera to see the color in their eyes.

Tip 2: Never underestimate the power of natural light. While having all the latest and greatest lights and modifiers is great, photographers can capture incredible images using nothing but the light available from the sun.

Peter explains this in a previous video, but above he explains how he shot with nothing but window light for the first four years of his professional career. Even today with limitless gear at his fingertips, he will often still make use of natural light for his images. He believes that if photographers can become proficient at shooting with natural light, they will be better able to emulate it in the studio.

Tip 3: Use continuous light so you can see exactly what's going on with your subject and how the shadows are falling. This will help photographers avoid strobes disrupting the conversations and banter with their subjects and will help reduce the pupil size to show off much more color in the subject's eyes.

Tip 4: Learn the Inverse Square Law. Put simply, the main idea is to get the lights as close as possible to the subject for a softer, and much more beautiful, light.

Tip 5: Hurley's final tip is to try his signature "triangle" style setup. He says that photographers can use this setup with any lighting equipment available regardless of it being natural light, strobes, or continuous. He recommends placing lights into strip boxes or flag them into the right shapes in order to create a triangle enclosure for the model because, in Hurley's opinion, he hasn't seen anything better than that setup that can reliably produce excellent headshots.

Be sure to watch the full video to see these tips in action or visit the Peter Hurley YouTube channel for additional videos.

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These 5 lighting tips from Peter Hurley will help you to shoot perfect headshots

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How To Shoot Professional Headshots with Natural and Continuous Light

Professional headshot photographer and educator Peter Hurley recently starred in a Back to Basics 22-minute tutorial that covers the natural and continuous lighting he uses during headshot photo sessions.

In the video, Hurley walks viewers through how he lights his headshots using natural or continuous light to achieve consistent results for his clients. He details how to use reflectors to control fill when shooting with natural light, and how to use continuous LED lighting to achieve a similar look and feel. As he sets up and executes each portrait, Hurley talks through every detail on how and why he does every little thing on set, which includes the angles he shoots and how to talk to models to be sure to get the best reactions and looks out of them for each shot. Hurley says if your clients are having fun on set, then their shots will look much better.

"Pointing the camera slightly upwards gives them a powerful and strong presence. I want them to look strong since this image will be their personal brand," he says.

For the natural light section, Hurley talks about the importance of developing an eye for lighting, especially when dealing with natural light situations since the weather can change your available light at any moment. This means compensating for any changes by adjusting camera settings or adding or removing reflectors for more control.

When using continuous lighting, Hurley discusses how to create two styles of headshots: the first is a little more dramatic and typically how he shoots all of his male clients, and the second setup shows how to recreate the more flat style of lighting achieved in his natural light setup from the beginning of the video.

For his male lighting setup, Hurley uses three LED panels in an uneven setting to provide some shadows, using the key at 30-percent with fill and kick set to 10-percent to 15-percent. For his female clients, Hurley uses a triangular setup with all three lights set to similar power output. This ensures that the shadows are removed providing softer flat lighting.

"I could still photograph men with flat beauty light, but I just like to shape the face and sculpt with the lights," he explains.

Hurley goes on to show how he builds up his lighting, including the use of strobes, to ensure his backgrounds remain consistently lit while using his LED lights on his subjects. Hurley also shows how using the triangular setup is angled specifically to ensure the light shines in the model's eyes to get the best looks. Finally, he explains how shooting with continuous lighting frees him up from worrying about clouds and lighting shifts when using natural light, letting him build a better rapport with his subject and leveraging that time to get the best possible shots for them.

Click here to see additional resources from Peter Hurley or to join his Headshot Crew, which is his growing team and community of headshot and portrait photographers from around the world.

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