Heya, today I want to share with you my lighting setup from yesterday. I kind of felt like trying out self-portraiture so I set up everything in our little flat – hell I need more space!

Anyways – what I did is the following – I tried out a technique called “butterfly-lighting” where you put your light high up in front of the subject at about an 45° angle down so that what happens is that the shadow underneath the nose is supposed to look like a butterfly. This setup is commonly used for women fashion portraiture. You can lighten up the shadows a little using a reflector positioned underneath the softbox also in front and lower of your subject reflecting the light from the softbox back up. You can see this effect under my chin.

I kind of like this setup as it is very simple and gives some nice highlights in the eyes. It also works perfectly with glasses – which sometimes is quite a problem in photography.

I also used the lighting-setup PSD by Kevin Kerz to illustrate the setup – have a look and have fun experimenting! ;-)