lighting like a mother – Farrah Braniff!

In the third installment of our series Lighting Like a Mother, sweet Farrah Braniff shares her high-key setup with MWC. For those of you that struggle with achieving a crisp, white background, this is the post for you!

Farrah shares, “Today I am showing you how I light my white background (high key) images. I struggled with my white set up for a while until I sat down with the folks at Larson and they helped me design this set up. I can use this set up with paper rolls or just the white wall and wood floor.

The Larson Starfish is mounted above and about 4 feet out from the background. The starfish looks like an upside-down umbrella and has six panels that you can open and close. When you look at the image, you can see that the front three panels of the starfish are closed.  The back three are open and lighting the background.  I used to light white backgrounds with 2 lights- one on either side. This works so much better because it is even, uses only one light and is off the floor (awesome with kids running around).  You need to try and keep your subject in front of the starfish. In other words, the subject goes between the starfish and the main lights up front.

For the lights up front, you can do all different things. I use my Larson 4×6 softbox as a main and add fill if I need it. I add fill either by turning on the smaller softbox on the right and turning it down low or using a simple 4×6 silver reflector on that right side. Keep in mind, for this set up, my white wall on the right acts like one big reflector. If you did not have that situation, you would definitely want to add some light to the right side using the fill light or the reflector as fill.

My background light is set up for F8 at 1/125 and ISO 100.  I set up my main to match that. Some photographers set up their background light to overexpose the white but it’s not necessary so long as your background light is evenly covering the background and the white is looking clean and uniform.  If you prefer to “blow out” your white, you can set the background light just a little hotter than your main.”

Well there you have it – a super-simple and super-effective high-key setup! Have a great weekend everyone!