6 simple lighting setups for shooting portraits at home (plus free cheat sheet)

Lighting Setup 6: Rim lighting from behind

The ideal method for emphasising the outline perimeter or shape of your subject's head.

In this lighting setup, the subject is not lit from the front but from behind to create a dazzling rim-light effect.

Only a tiny light source is needed and care must be taken not to set the flash unit at too high a power.

To prevent the face from recording as a silhouette, open up the aperture nice and wide and, if needed, use a couple of reflectors either side of the model to bounce light back into the face.