There’s a lot of flexibility in portraiture to create a variety of looks. One of the main ways to make your own mark on a photo is through lighting, and this guide might just be the trick for your next shoot.
I thought – perhaps for years at this point – that I would get sick of RGB and colored light in portraits; that it will age poorly and date my work where I use it. But, here we are, years on, and I’m still thoroughly enjoying it. However, the most interesting thing is combining it with other lighting techniques.
I use border light sparingly, although a common example would be similar to how Lindsay Adler uses it in this video: for profile pictures. Personal profiles are particularly difficult to implement because few people have strong profiles. Almost none of us are lucky enough to look perfectly good, including a lot of models. That said, if you find someone with great looks, you’ll want to accentuate the photo in a way that emphasizes it. I usually go for coarser, straighter strokes to actually draw a line around the edges of the face, but Adler’s use of softboxes and colors in this video made me give it a go next time!
Check out this great tutorial on how you can recreate a similar style for this stunning final image.
