Headshot lighting can be a complicated subject, but it also revolves around three incredibly simple principles and setups. After eleven years of working with it as a headshot photographer in nyc, it excites when it works and confounds when it does not. Nothing is more rewarding than a beautifully lit headshot and nothing is more frustrating than one that looks like garbage.

If you find yourself intimidated by the sheer volume of choices and and decisions that can be made when becoming a photographer, it’s lighting techniques can really be broken down into three simple setups that you can use to carry you, very literally, throughout a career.

Whether you’re just starting out or an industry veteran, this guide can either be an intro or a refresher and break down the mass of noise into a few simple to use and easy to follow techniques that surround 90% of commercial portraiture.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

The Big Three - Loop, Butterfly, and Broad

Loop Lighting

Butterfly Lighting

Broad Lighting

Summary

Conclusion

Key Takeaways

There are a dizzying selection of lighting setups and techniques available to photographers with their headshot lighting, but 90% of them can all be broken down and branch out from three simple setups or techniques.
These three techniques are the most widely used and commonly found setups in the industry, and they can carry a professional photographer through every facet of an industry - be it from commercial portraiture, to actor, to beauty, and beyond.
Each lighting technique is more commonly found within a specific industry. Loop lighting, for instance, is used more for actor and journalist portraiture. Butterfly lighting is more commonly found in beauty.
The There Most Common Lighting Techniques are:
Loop Lighting
Butterfly Lighting
Broad Lighting
Broad Lighting is dependent on the subject’s face resting at an angle.
Loop lighting is dependent on the subject’s face being straight-on
Modifiers, sizes of light, or equipment used do not matter in respect to these lighting techniques. A loop light is still a loop light whether the key be a 69” Octabank or a speed light.

What is Loop lighting?

Loop lighting is not only the most common form of headshot lighting but it’s also the most common form of portraiture lighting in general. Named after the distinctive loop that forms just underneath and to the opposing side of the person’s nose, loop lighting is also referred to as 45 / 45 degree lighting (this stands for pointing down by forty five degrees, and at 45 degrees away from the subject’s forward-pointing angle.

Loop lighting encompasses a massive array of portraiture types most commonly used in beauty, editorial, general purpose portraiture, and corporate headshots.

While earlier cited as 45/45 lighting, one can play a little with the angle exactly and move it either closer to axis or away from axis, depending on taste. A less commonly used gauge for how good your loop is is the far-side of your subject’s face. If the light is too far-off axis, the shadowed side of your subject’s face will begin to creep over and move toward’s the center.

What is Butterfly Lighting?

*Corporate Headshot Utilizing Butterfly Lighting Technique*

Butterfly lighting is more commonly found in beauty and named for the distinctive butterfly shape that forms underneath the subject’s nose. The placement of the light is directly overhead the subject, pointed down. How high you have the light and how much angle there is pointed down at your subject will determine how flat the lighting is.

In the above example, the light itself is positioned just above the head of the subject (as in if the camera was raised an inch higher, the bottom of the octabox would be in it’s viewfinder).

As mentioned above, the angle of the lighting in relation to the subject will determine how flat the lighting is (or otherwise). If the light is positioned extremely low to the subject and pointed almost parallel to the subject’s face, the lighting will ‘flatten out’ and the subject will not have a lot of volume to the image (or it won’t look as three-dimensional). If, on the other hand, the lighting is raised slightly higher and closer to the subject and angled downward, more volume and dimension will be added to the image.

As with loop lighting, typically the angle the light casts downward is at about 45 degrees. The difference between loop lighting and butterfly lighting is that loop lighting can oftentimes be used for slightly more dramatic effects, while butterfly lighting almost universally has a more commercial and airy feel to it.

Another aspect of butterfly lighting comes from the light that forms on the face. Oftentimes the photographer can assess how correct the lighting placement is in the headshot by the pattern of light that falls on the subject. Notice in the above image the diamond shaped pattern of light in the center of the subject - that is an indication of proper lighting.

What is Broad Lighting?

While loop lighting is the key placed at forty five degrees to a subject looking straight at the camera, broad lighting is the key placed at forty five degrees to a subject at an angle. The reason the lighting itself is called broad lighting is because the key light is cast at the broad side of the subject’s face (or the area of the face shown most in the camera).

Broad lighting is used in a variety of circumstances but primarily for actor shots, journalist and editorial portraits, and is almost always used for beauty lighting when the subject is at an angle.

Short lighting, the opposite of broad, is rarely used in commercial beauty.

Summary

Loop Lighting - Placed at forty five degrees to subject and forty five degrees down, this lighting is named after the distinctive loop shadow just under ad to the side of the subject’s nose. Far and away the most commonly used form of lighting. Encompasses nearly all forms of portraiture.

Butterfly Lighting - Placed overhead of the subject and cast generally forty five degrees down, this form of lighting is named after the butterfly shadow cast just under the subject’s nose. Most commonly used in beauty and commercial portraiture.

Broad Lighting - Placed at forty five degrees to an angled subject, or a subject not directly facing the camera, and forty five degrees down, this lighting is once again not named like the above two setups (in that it is not named after the shadow cast by the key light). Broad lighting is called broad lighting because the key light is used to light the broadest, or largest area of the face (the area of the face closest to camera).

Conclusion

You’ve likely heard that lighting is everything in photography - and it is. This being said, whether just starting out or even being an industry veteran, the amount of lighting techniques one can practice with their headshots is beyond dizzying, myriad, and numerous.

However

Just remember that the dozens of hundreds of thousands of portrait and headshot lighting practices almost always spring from the above three principles. Loop, butterfly, and broad - nearly everything springs from those three fundamentals and you can use them in nearly any given situation to carry you through a shoot.