Playing with shadows

Dan Mold’s three easy one-light B&W portrait set-ups to follow at home

- Dan Mold’s

Portraiture can at times feel like a bit of a dark art. There’s so much jargon and little pieces of equipment to get up to speed on, from flashes to guide numbers, and lighting modifiers to triggers. It can be difficult to know where to start! That’s why this month we’re taking portraits back to basics using a single continuous light bulb to achieve three completely different looks. You can take these shots at home with a basic setup, you’ll need a dark background, a few lightstands, a curtain pole and then a few extra props that we run through below. The three techniques we cover in this project are the perfect place to start with artificial light in a studio setting as we’re using constant lighting. This is different from flashguns which don’t have a modelling light, so will be much easier to tweak the lighting and get the shadows falling on your model precisely where you need them to. Let’s get to it!

THE SET-UP SIMPLE MONO PORTRAITS

Discover the kit you need for beautiful black-and-white people pictures

01 HOUSEHOLD ITEMS We used cheap and cheerful props that you’ll likely have at home including a netted curtain, venetian blind and colander to cast shadows across our model’s face, though you can of course get creative with whatever you have to hand at home.

02 LIGHTING We used a standard LED bulb in a clip holder attached to a light stand so that we could move it around and fine tune the position, though you could of course use a floor lamp, constant lighting with stands or even a flash head with a modelling lamp.