In high-key portraits, rim light and fill light must be balanced to create a bright, clean beauty shot. If one is brightened, the other may appear weak. Karl Taylor of Visual Education demonstrates how to achieve this balance using three umbrellas.
Taylor sets up two silver umbrellas behind the model at 45 degrees and a Broncolor Focus 110 deep umbrella in front. The background is a pink-painted sheet of hardboard, hung close to the rear umbrellas to create a pale pastel effect.
The model’s hair is slicked back, and her shoulders are bare, allowing the rim light to wrap around her hair, neck, and shoulders. Taylor shoots with a 70-200mm zoom lens at 70mm, f/4, 1/60 s, and ISO 100.
Lighting Ratio
Instead of testing each light individually, Taylor fires all three at once. This allows him to read what each light is doing from a single frame. He notices a mistake where one rear head is set to 400 J and the other to 800 J, resulting in a one-stop difference.
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Taylor’s first test shows a strong rim light and an underexposed fill light. Adjusting the fill light two stops makes the rim light nearly disappear, while raising the rim light two stops makes the fill light appear dark again. This relationship is described as a lighting ratio, counted in stops.
A one-stop difference between two lights is a 2:1 ratio, two stops is a 4:1 ratio, and so on. Studio strobes like Broncolor’s use a power scale where one whole number equals one stop. Taylor’s adjustments work on any system, changing one light and adjusting the other by a known number of stops.
Modifiers and Control
Taylor also experiments with the model’s head position, finding that it affects the rim light as much as the power dial. By adjusting the rear light and the front light, he achieves a balanced look. He also tries removing the reflector from the Focus 110 and sliding the head along the shaft to compare the shadow under the jawline.
Taylor’s adjustments demonstrate the importance of controlling the lighting ratio to achieve a bright, clean beauty shot. On the way to achieving this balance, he tries pushing everything up half a stop and finds the front light has gone too far at 7, so he brings it back to 6.5 and leaves the rims raised. The fill ends up a touch brighter than before, because some of the extra light from the rear umbrellas bounces back onto the face. The final result is a high-key portrait with a balanced rim light and fill light. For a more detailed look at the process, the video above provides a step-by-step guide.
