Studio Lighting 101

Get started by meeting Julia Robbs, a NYC-based commercial photographer and your teacher for this course. Julia begins by telling you about her journey into photography and introduces some projects and people that inspire her work. Take a quick look at how the course is structured and get ready to discover studio lighting!

Learn about the three foundations of lighting for photography: distance, direction, and shape. Lighting is what sets the tone of a photograph, so it’s important to understand how to establish a strong foundation for shooting under any lighting scenario. Discover how Julia conceptualizes a shoot and then puts together a mood board for inspiration. Go through your tools and equipment before learning how to set things up in your studio.

Set up your camera for shooting with Capture One and see how to share images directly with a team. Explore three different studio lighting scenarios. Start with natural light, the first and easiest place to start. Then, see how to set the lighting for a beauty shoot, starting with one light source and adding another to see how it changes the mood. Finally, experiment with a creative lighting setup using some colored gels and filters.

Join Julia as she shows you her steps to take on post-production and editing. She shows you how she makes her selection and the basic adjustments she makes in Adobe Lightroom before making final edits in Photoshop. Finish by seeing how to export your final images in high quality, whether for print or sharing online.