Portrait photography tip: Light your subject to look slimmer

Saturday 4 June 2022, 23:23 by Elja Trum | 3,240 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

As a photographer, you usually can't send your subject to the gym before the shoot. But with your lighting, you can make your model look slimmer, or a little broader.

Aäron - f/9, 1/160s, 100 ISO @ 70mm
This technique doesn't work when your model is looking straight ahead, but it does as soon as they turn their head slightly to one side.

Your subject now has a broad side and a narrow side. On the broad side, you can see the face from the nose to the ear. On the narrow side, you only see a small part of the face and cheek.

If you let the main light fall on the broad side, the model looks broader. If you let the light fall on the narrow side, your model looks slightly slimmer.

Useful to remember when you want to show your model to their best advantage in a photo.

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about Photofacts

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