A better Rembrandt lighting

Well ok that might be a bit over the top… or is it?

The Rembrandt lighting is one of the most beautiful lighting setups.
But when you use only one light source it can be a bit dark on the opposite site of the light.

When I started experimenting with lighting setups I love the Rembrandt setup, but as mentioned above the darker side was not something I wanted in all my images.
At first I started by adding a standard reflector on the side, but this was not the success I hoped for. It did open up some shadows, but that was about it. It just didn’t look right.

Adding an extra strobe worked, but it looked terrible.
The reason was simple, at that moment I only had a few light shapers and that meant I had to use a reflector (on the strobe) as my accent light, and when you light a model from the back with a harsh light source you can see all the hairs on their arms and the dust in your studio.

You can prevent this by feathering the light.
This means you aim the light away from your subject and only use the side of the light.
This gives you a much softer quality of light, and the added benefit (or disadvantage) is that you can get beautiful lensflares, because the light is aimed straight at your camera.

But the best lightsource for this kind of setups is the striplight, or a small softbox.
With these you can easily steer your light and they are easy to control against spill light.

But as always… a video works better.
So let’s take a look at a behind the scenes video about the Rembrandt lighting and accents.

Workshops

Want to learn everything about light control?
Want to visit a workshop where it’s not just shooting a model with a fixed lighting setup, but see how the setup is built and adjusted to the taste of the group?
And of course learn how to work with poses, backgrounds, small sets, styling, retouching, and a lot more…..

If this all sounds awesome, visit fotografie-workshops.nl and book your workshop.
If you don’t speak Dutch, no problem, let us know a few weeks in advance, and we can switch the workshop to English.
Not possible to travel to the Netherlands?
We got you covered with our 1:1 online workshop.
We have a full streaming setup in our studio. 4 detail cameras and of course the retouching software, so you can see every detail and of course ask questions during the day. Plus, you get all the RAW files after the workshop.