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Writer's pictureGilbert Carosin

How to get better studio portrait by feathering the light

Updated: Sep 13, 2023


girl with afro hair posing in front of a grey backdrop
Feathering the light to create amazing studio portrait

Feathering the light is one of these little secrets that many professional use in the studio to create amazing portrait. As you must know when using a soft-box the edge of modifier have the softest light compared to the centre that have a bright hotspot.


girl posing with white flower in her afro hair
The benefit of feathering are soft shadows, beautiful skin tone, and high constrast.

As light travel through the modifier, it becomes softer on the edge and this is the portion of light you want to use for portraiture . This it will create soft beautiful light with unique tones.


girl with afro hair posing on grey backdrop
The technique gives you a balanced light output that doesn't require any editing

You can push this concept further by feathering the light, instead of pointing your modifier at the model you simply turn it away from the model so that the centre is facing the camera and only the edge of modifier are pointed at the model.


girl with afro hair and white flower in her hair posing in studio
when feathering the backdrop usually turn dark, here a small flash behind the model is creating the vignetting effect

This can sound counter intuitive but it does really work the light from the edge is one of the most beautiful light i have ever worked with, skin tone becomes alive with natural contrast, beautiful texture, and colours.


girl with afro hair and African style dress posing
feathering the light also give a very natural looking result close to natural light.

A few thing to take into account using this technique, as a lot light will bounce back to your camera and lens it is best to have a lens hood to avoid any flare/haze.


Most of a light is directed away from the subject which means your model will receive less light. You will need more power than usual to illuminate your subject properly, maybe even have to upgrade to a more powerful flash/strobe ( a 400 watts strobe is enough for my shooting at f8/f11 ).


Feathering the light works with all modifier bit some specific designs have better result, the deeper your modifier the less efficient this technique is, i work with the Elinchrom rotalux 53 and the light output is just amazing.


Feathering the light also decrease the light reaching the backdrop and the fall off will be much more dramatic, consider using an additional light on the backdrop that can give a beautiful vignetting effect


As we are working with the edge of the modifier placement of light is critical for the best effect and to alleviate this problem it is better to work with the largest modifier you have


girl with white flower in her afro hair
feathering the light works well with additional, here is a hair light on the right of model that create more depth to the picture

one last thing, because of their designs, beauty dish are really not optimise for the feathering technique it is simply best to avoid this technique with beauty dish.


You can find below a very comprehensive video by Felix Kunze, the master of this technique.



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