How Black Flags Carve Shadow Into a Portrait (And Why I Use Them on Almost Every Studio Shot)

How Black Flags Carve Shadow Into a Portrait (And Why I Use Them on Almost Every Studio Shot)

There’s a problem I kept running into early in my studio work: I’d dial in a beautiful softbox position, get the exposure right, and still walk away with portraits that looked flat. The light was technically correct but it wasn’t doing anything interesting to the face. The cheekbones weren’t defined. The jawline disappeared into the background. Everything looked like it was lit for a driver’s license photo, not a magazine page.