I keep a lighting journal. Every shoot, I sketch the setup in a small Leuchtturm notebook — light positions, modifier choices, distance to subject, power ratios. I’ve filled four of them. The reason I started was embarrassing: early in my career, I’d hit a look I loved on a Tuesday, and by Thursday I couldn’t recreate it. The variables had drifted and I had no record. Now every light in my studio has a strip of masking tape with its number, and every setup gets logged before I fire a single frame.

That discipline taught me something more valuable than any technique: portrait lighting isn’t creative chaos. It’s a small vocabulary of repeatable patterns, and once you understand the geometry behind each one, you can execute them reliably, adjust them on the fly, and explain them to an assistant without waving your arms around.

Here are the five patterns I use on nearly every portrait shoot, what’s actually happening with each one, and how I set them up.

Why the Shape of the Shadow Is the Whole Game

Light creates form by casting shadow. That’s it. The pattern of a shadow on a face tells you where the light source was, how large it was, and how close it was to the subject. Before you touch a modifier, you need to understand that a harder, smaller source produces sharper shadow edges and more defined features, while a larger, softer source wraps around the face and compresses contrast.

A 7-inch reflector at 6 feet behaves completely differently than a 5-foot Octobox at 3 feet, even if both are set to f/8. Distance and size together determine what photographers call the quality of light. Get comfortable thinking in those terms before you memorize pattern names.

The Five Patterns and How to Place Them

Rembrandt is the one most shooters learn first. The key light sits at roughly 45 degrees to the side and 45 degrees above the subject’s eye line. You’re looking for a small triangle of light on the shadow-side cheek, roughly the size of the subject’s eye. I use a 24-inch beauty dish as my key for this pattern, set at about 4 feet from the subject, with a fill card at a 1:4 ratio. It’s dramatic and it reads well on men and women with strong bone structure.

Loop lighting is a softer variation where the key light is slightly above eye level and only 30-40 degrees to the side. The nose shadow drops at a slight downward angle and loops toward the corner of the mouth without touching it. This is probably my most-used pattern for editorial beauty work. It’s flattering on nearly everyone and it doesn’t require strong cheekbones to land well. Key at 1:3 ratio with a 36-inch softbox.

Butterfly lighting places the key light directly in front of the subject, elevated high enough to cast a small shadow directly under the nose. It’s named for the butterfly-shaped shadow it creates. Beauty brands love this pattern because it opens up the eyes and smooths the skin under the cheekbones. I add a reflector below the chin at about 1:4 fill to lift the shadows without going flat. For this one I often reach for a 47-inch Octobox from Profoto, pulled close, around 2.5 to 3 feet from the face.

Split lighting sends the key directly 90 degrees to the side so exactly half the face is lit and half is in shadow. It’s high contrast, it’s bold, and it’s easy to overuse. I use it sparingly, mostly for male editorial subjects where I want something confrontational. No fill, or a very weak fill at 1:8 ratio at most.

Broad and short lighting are less about placement and more about orientation. Broad lighting means the key falls on the side of the face turned toward camera, which widens the face. Short lighting means the key falls on the side turned away from camera, which narrows and sculpts it. Rotating the subject’s head changes which pattern you’re in without moving a single light. This is a tool, not a standalone setup, and it layers on top of any of the patterns above.

The Ratio Math That Makes Each Pattern Predictable

A 1:2 ratio means the lit side receives twice the light of the shadow side, which in stops is a 1-stop difference. A 1:4 ratio is 2 stops. A 1:8 ratio is 3 stops. I shoot most of my editorial work between 1:2 and 1:4. Anything beyond 1:8 starts to lose printable detail in the shadows unless you’re intentionally going for high-contrast black and white.

I meter both sides with a Sekonic L-858D incident meter and actually write the numbers down. This is not optional for me. If I expose the lit side at f/8 and the shadow side reads f/4, I’m at 1:4. That’s not an estimate. That’s a measurement.

When I Got This Wrong on a Real Job

Several years ago, I was shooting a beauty campaign and spent 45 minutes on a butterfly setup that kept looking flat and overlit. My assistant finally pointed out that I had my key at the same height as the subject’s eyes, not above them. The shadow under the nose had disappeared entirely. I was lighting a face, not sculpting one. I moved the key up 18 inches, angled it down, and the setup snapped into place in one test frame. It cost me time on a paid job because I hadn’t verified my geometry before we brought the talent in. I’ve never skipped that check again.

Practice One Pattern Until You Can Build It in the Dark

Every photographer I respect who is consistently excellent at portrait lighting knows these five patterns so well they barely think about them. The creativity lives in which modifier you choose, how close you push the source, which pattern suits this subject’s face, and how you layer multiple lights together. But that creative thinking only flows when the foundational geometry is automatic.

Learn one pattern at a time. Build it, meter it, document it, and shoot 50 frames with it before you move to the next. The journal helps more than you’d think.