How to Light & Shoot a Dramatic Portrait by Yourself

In this video, we’ll show you how to create a dramatic portrait flash setup all by yourself! This is a great technique to learn when you are solo-shooting or don’t have an assistant to help you out.

1. Place Your Camera on a Tripod

For this tutorial, you’ll notice we are using the C.A.M.P Framework that we created in our Lighting 4 course, which means our first step is to decide on our composition for our photo. We chose a “leading line” of rough terrain composed of rocks that positions Jae right in the center. With this position we were able to emphasize the backlight of the sun. Once you’ve decided on this, let’s lock things down by placing your camera on a tripod. Why? This will keep things consistent for you while you’re shooting on your own, it’s a lot easier to manage when solo, plus there’s an added benefit which we’ll get to later!

2. Dial-In Your Ambient Light Exposure

The intent here is obviously something more dramatic than normal. Since we know we’re going to…