When it comes to portrait photography, learning to work with artificial lighting will make you far more versatile and enable creative opportunities that simply would not be possible otherwise. If that is something you would like to start diving into, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you the fundamentals and have you ready to tackle your first shoot. 

Coming to you from Pye Jirsa with Adorama TV, this great video tutorial will show you the fundamentals of using artificial lighting for a portrait. When you are new to artificial lighting, one particularly important thing is to not tackle overly complex setups right off the bat. While you might see pros using more complex multi-light setups, you can absolutely create compelling, professional-level images with a single light, and sticking to just one source to start will help you to build a good intuitive grasp of important parameters like subject-to-source distance, modifier size, fall-off, and more, leaving you better able to move on to two- or three-light setups down the road. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Jirsa. 

If you would like to learn more about lighting for portraits, be sure to check out “Illuminating The Face: Lighting for Headshots and Portraits With Peter Hurley!”