Available Light

First, always start with no lights before adding lights. This photo at the top shows you the excellent diffused lighting of the open shade on our deck.

Foot Lights

One of the lights used in theater is the foot lighting. This helps the older actors look younger. So, while they can act better after some years of experience than they did when they were young, they need the footlights to help soften the wrinkles of the skin.

If you go to Broadway and see the stages, you will usually see some lights built in the front of the stage floor near the audience. These lights give you the ghostly lighting children like creating using a flashlight under the chin. Bringing it away from the face looks more like your theater footlights.

Foot Lighting balancing with available light

In the photo above, we are still getting some overhead lighting from the sky in this outdoor photo, but look in the eyes and see the lower light being very bright.

Butterfly Lighting

Butterfly Lighting and Foot Lighting combined with available lighting

If you put a light straight above the lens pointing down at a model, you will get a butterfly shadow under the nose. To see this effect, the model must look straight into the camera with no foot lighting.

In the last photo of my daughter, I kept the footlight and the butterfly light the same power and underexposed the overall picture by one stop.

The Setup

Setup: You can see the SB800 on the lower light and the SB900 on the upper light.

To trigger the Nikon SB800 and Nikon SB900, I am using the PocketWizard Mini TT1 on the camera and the Flex TT5 transceiver on the flashes.

I am shooting through the white umbrellas with the soft domes on the flashes to soften the light.

To keep the background blurred, I shot with the Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.4 lens at ƒ/1.4 opening. If you look closely, you will notice that the front of her nose is out of focus as the edges of her face are just behind the eyes.

I am focusing on her eyes.

Setup

To control the amount of power from the flashes, I use the PocketWizard AC3, which attaches to the Mini TT1.

The flashes are set to 0 compensation for the photos above, and the camera is set to -1 EV using the exposure compensation dial on the Nikon D4.

I am shooting in Aperture mode.

• ISO 100
• ƒ/1.4
• 1/500

These are the camera settings for all the photos above.

Nikon Telephoto AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D IF Autofocus Lens

You must use a lens hood to avoid lens flare when taking these photos.

The Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.4 comes with a lens hood, which is made of metal. You can always buy a rubber off-brand hood if you choose.

Why not use a reflector?

Most photographers will use a reflector to act as a footlight, which is perfect. However, the advantage of using a flash with TTL control is you can control even more so the effect of the footlight.

The best you can do with a reflector is come close to the same value of light as the leading light; however, for some people, you may want to pump it up to be even brighter. 

I suggest going out and trying some of this yourself. You can get comfortable with the setup and try different things to have one more lighting option for your portraits.