I’ve divided the lighting section of this book into three separate categories: portraits, commercial photographs, and fashion photography. The great thing about being an artist is that you can easily combine elements of each style to create a unique approach. You’ll see that many of my portraits are directly influenced by my fashion photography and vice versa. As I’ve mentioned before, the styling information presented in this book is a result of my experience working in the fashion industry.
Before you begin photographing anyone, decide on which photographic direction that you intend to take. If you’re hired to photograph a doctor in her practice, you’ll probably want to adhere to using portrait lighting techniques. If you’re hired to photograph women’s sports apparel, you’ll likely want to select lighting catered to commercial or fashion photography.
The following chapters describe how to better control and modify light. Don’t get discouraged if you cannot precisely replicate the images in this section. Many photographers forget that what differentiates the commercial photographer from the portrait photographer is the creative direction, the emotion, the production, the subject matter, and the quality of retouching in an image. It’s easy to replicate someone’s lighting; the hard part is trying to emulate the level of production and subject matter for a photo shoot. Those two elements come with time, patience, practice, and larger budgets.