Rembrandt Lighting... But Better

Hey guys Frank here and welcome to another episode of how did I shoot this one and today we're gonna talk about one of the most beautiful lighting setups I think the Rembrandt lighting and we're gonna take as an example this shot. So when I started out with photography I think one of the immediately things that jumped out to me was the Rembrandt lighting and I don't know why but it's the the contrast in the image it's that very very dark area on one side then the lighter area on the other side and of course Rembrandt's paintings are amazing. By the way if you love Rembrandt's paintings make sure that you also check out Caravaggio. I think Caravaggio is even more photorealistic and I absolutely love those paintings. But when you look at the old masters you can actually see that they used lighting in a very dramatic way but it was still natural lighting right. Now when I started with photography there was one rule there's only one light source in nature so you should only use one strobe and somehow when I started out with the Rembrandt lighting I always ran into problems with that because I love of course the whole contrast thing but I always thought that that side was way too dark. Now the first thing you learn of course is take a reflector put it on that side and just open up those shadows but somehow that didn't do it for me. So when I started with doing the Rembrandt lighting very soon I started adding an extra accent light on the side creating a beautiful accent light on the jawline or maybe even the cheekbones depending on how the model turns her face. Now one of the things that I couldn't solve very easily was the light fall off on the backdrop. When I looked at my older images it was always dark and then you saw the image of the model and that was light then the darker area with of course that accent lighting and then you saw on the backdrop a little bit of that light fall off of your main light source and that's because inherent to the Rembrandt lighting you place your light slightly behind your model aiming forward so in other words the light spreads out and it doesn't hit the backdrop before it hits your model and that creates that dark area then that bright area on the model's face the accent lighting and then of course your backdrop. When we started using the lantern from Jikoto that changed everything. You can look at your light source or your light shaper and actually already predict what it's going to do and with the lantern you can see that the sides are opaque or open and that means when I place this one in the Rembrandt lighting setup I can still place it slightly behind my model aimed forward but because the sides are open I'm now also lighting my backdrop and that creates in my opinion a much more smoother image and it just looks nicer. Still I'm adding that accent light of course to open up the three-dimensionality of the shot but in essence that lantern changed the total look of the Rembrandt lighting. So let's go inside our studio and let's take a look at our setup from of course that lighting setup and of course the results and there's one extra thing but I'm going to tell you that at the end. So as you can see the lantern from Jikoto a great modifier for Rembrandt lighting. We also use it for newborn photography still life and the reason is simple it's an opaque side so it spreads out all the way over your set but there's one thing that you may or may not yeah did ever in your life did you ever shoot against the light yes of course you create that beautiful highlighted contrast on your face right that beautiful dark almost glamour like edge light but I don't mean that one I mean this one yes when I started out with photography one of the first softboxes I really fell in love with was the 1.9 meter softbox from Allingram and the reason was not because it was lit omnidirectional so mean that it actually get a nice even lighting all over that big softbox but also because you could place your models in front of it. Now I don't do this a lot but in this case I just wanted to show the students of the workshop that hey you can also just shoot it with our softbox as our backdrop. So I hope you enjoyed this little tip about Rembrandt lighting but most of all look at your light shapers and you can predict how they are designed and what they will do for your lighting and some light shapers are awesome to open up the backdrops while some light shapers are great to block off the light of your backdrop it just depends on when do you want it and what is the end result that you want so the next time you go to a shop don't just look at the size of the softbox but also look at how it's designed how does it spread out the light or is it open or closed from the sides. Big things and they will change your light quality immensely. See you again next time. Bye guys!