When you are creating the lighting setup for a portrait, you can approach it from the point of view of adding lights and adjustment tools until you get the desired result. However, while adding light is, of course, important, it’s also important to know where to take it away. This is where the idea of negative filler comes in. However, filling in negative words can sometimes be misunderstood. This great video tutorial will show you how tonal fill really works and how to use it for your portrait work.
Coming to you from John Gress, this great video tutorial will show you the details of how to fill in tones for portrait lighting. Portrait photographers often use v-flats to create a negative fill, but the name might be a bit misleading. Negative fill doesn’t mean you’re “filling” or adding anything to the image; rather, you are preventing something (reflected light) from being added to the image. This may seem like a trivial or too vague distinction that matters only in words, but as you’ll see in the video, it really has a meaningful impact when you’re lighting a portrait and if If you think about it the wrong way, you may not get the results you want. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Gress.
If you want to continue learning about portrait lighting, be sure to check out “Face lighting: Lighting for landscape and portrait shots With Peter Hurley! “
