Studio Lighting

Why Your Softbox Is Lying to You (And What to Use Instead)
Lighting Techniques

Why Your Softbox Is Lying to You (And What to Use Instead)

Every modifier in my studio has a strip of masking tape on it with a label. Not a cute nickname. A descriptor: “36-inch octa,” “5-degree grid,” “48x36 strip.” I started doing this years ago because I got tired of grabbing the wrong tool in the middle of a tethered shoot while a client sat behind my monitor. The labeling habit sounds obsessive until the day it saves you from making a $4,000-an-hour mistake.

The Vanity Fair Two-Light Setup That Reignited My Love for Studio Portraiture
Video Tutorials

The Vanity Fair Two-Light Setup That Reignited My Love for Studio Portraiture

There’s a specific kind of dread that creeps in when a shoot isn’t working and you can’t diagnose why. The lights are set, the camera is dialed in, the subject is in front of you — and nothing. I’ve been there more than I’d like to admit. Usually the problem isn’t technical. It’s that I’ve stopped thinking about why I’m making the photograph and started just executing a sequence of habits.

One Light, Five Modifiers: What Videographers Can Steal From Studio Photography
Video Tutorials

One Light, Five Modifiers: What Videographers Can Steal From Studio Photography

Every cinematographer I’ve ever talked to has a version of the same complaint: too much gear, not enough control. They’re hauling Fresnels and Source Fours and a Joker to get through a single interview setup, when half the time what they actually need is one well-modified light and the knowledge to shape it. That’s the tension JP Morgan at The Slanted Lens addresses head-on in his tutorial on using a single LED unit with interchangeable modifiers, and it’s worth breaking down for anyone who shoots both stills and video.

One Light, One Strip Bank, and Why Groom Portraits Deserve More Attention Than They Get
Video Tutorials

One Light, One Strip Bank, and Why Groom Portraits Deserve More Attention Than They Get

Groom portraits are the forgotten child of wedding photography. Every tutorial, every lighting course, every lighting diagram pinned to a studio wall is overwhelmingly built around the bride. The groom gets five minutes between the ceremony and the cocktail hour, a pat on the shoulder, and a standing pose in front of whatever wall happens to be nearby. I’ve been guilty of this myself, and the results show it. The images are flat, rushed, and forgettable.

Three-Point Lighting for Video Interviews: What Photographers Already Know (And the One Thing They Don't)
Video Tutorials

Three-Point Lighting for Video Interviews: What Photographers Already Know (And the One Thing They Don't)

More clients are asking me to shoot talking-head videos alongside the stills. Corporate headshot day now comes with a request for a CEO intro clip. The beauty brand wants behind-the-scenes footage. And the first question every photographer asks when this happens is: do I need to learn an entirely new craft? The honest answer is no, not from scratch. In this Daniel Norton Photographer tutorial, Watch the full tutorial on YouTube, Daniel lays out a three-point interview lighting setup that will feel immediately familiar to anyone who has spent time in a portrait studio.

How a Newborn Specialist's 1,200 Square Feet Taught Me to Think About Studio Space Differently
Video Tutorials

How a Newborn Specialist's 1,200 Square Feet Taught Me to Think About Studio Space Differently

There’s a version of studio photography that looks like this: one massive open room, a grid of Profoto heads, maybe a cyclorama wall, and enough space to park a truck. That’s the world I live in most days shooting beauty and fashion in Los Angeles. So when a colleague sent me a studio tour from a completely different corner of this industry, I was skeptical it would teach me anything useful.

Small Studio, Smart System: What Felicia Schütte's Bonaire Setup Taught Me About Working in Tight Spaces
Video Tutorials

Small Studio, Smart System: What Felicia Schütte's Bonaire Setup Taught Me About Working in Tight Spaces

I shoot out of a 400-square-foot space in Los Angeles. That sounds like plenty until you factor in two light stands, a boom arm, a seamless backdrop roll, a prop corner, and enough floor space to actually move around your subject. Square footage disappears fast, and the photographers who figure out how to make a small room work well are the ones worth studying closely. When I came across this studio tour from The Portrait System featuring Felicia Schütte, a Portrait Masters Fellow working out of the island of Bonaire in the Dutch Caribbean, I watched it twice.

Reading Light: How to Identify and Build Classic Studio Lighting Patterns From Scratch
Video Tutorials

Reading Light: How to Identify and Build Classic Studio Lighting Patterns From Scratch

Every time I take on a new editorial client, I pull out my phone and open the lighting diagram app I built myself. Before a single strobe fires, I want a plan. But that habit only developed because I spent years doing the opposite — guessing, adjusting, guessing again — and occasionally ruining shots because I couldn’t read what the light was actually doing. The skill I was missing wasn’t gear knowledge.

Three Lights, Two Gels, One Killer Fashion Frame: Breaking Down Aaron Nace's High-Fashion Vault Shoot
Video Tutorials

Three Lights, Two Gels, One Killer Fashion Frame: Breaking Down Aaron Nace's High-Fashion Vault Shoot

Every few months I pull out my lighting journal and flip back through old setups. Some of them make me cringe. Some of them remind me that the best lighting problems get solved before the model ever walks onto the set. The high-fashion vault shoot that Aaron Nace (PHLEARN) breaks down in his tutorial sits firmly in the second category. It’s a tight, purposeful lighting plan built around a location’s existing character, and watching it laid out step by step answered a question I’ve wrestled with on editorial jobs for years: how do you introduce color into a shot without making the skin look like a Halloween costume?

Pro Product Photography in Tight Spaces: What Karl Taylor's Budget Shoot Actually Teaches You
Video Tutorials

Pro Product Photography in Tight Spaces: What Karl Taylor's Budget Shoot Actually Teaches You

I shoot commercial work out of a studio in Los Angeles that I’ve spent years optimizing. The right modifiers, the right power packs, enough ceiling height to do almost anything. And yet some of my most technically instructive moments have come from watching experienced photographers deliberately strip all of that away. There’s a specific kind of clarity that comes from constraints, and it’s something I try to remind myself of every time a client assumes that the quality of the final image scales directly with the size of the equipment rental invoice.

The Laser Trick That Changed How I Position Lights for Reflective Product Shots
Video Tutorials

The Laser Trick That Changed How I Position Lights for Reflective Product Shots

There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes from lighting a product with a glossy surface. You dial in what looks like a clean, controlled setup, take the shot, and the whole face of the product is a blown-out white rectangle. The name is gone. The color is gone. What you have is essentially a very expensive photograph of a reflection. I’ve been there more times than I want to admit, and it took me a long time to develop a reliable system for predicting where that reflection would land before I ever fired a strobe.

How I Set Up a Glamour Portrait Studio Session (And What I Learned from Tony Northrup's Shoot)
Video Tutorials

How I Set Up a Glamour Portrait Studio Session (And What I Learned from Tony Northrup's Shoot)

Every studio photographer eventually faces the same problem: too many moving pieces arriving at the same time. The model shows up, the makeup artist is still packing her kit, and you’re standing there trying to swap out a modifier while everyone watches. I’ve been there more than once in my early years, and it cost me momentum on shoots where momentum was everything. That’s why I keep coming back to tutorials that treat production logistics as seriously as they treat f-stops.