Think of Your Softbox as a Pub Window
When I first started learning photography, particularly studio photography, I found the way people taught it really tricky. It was way too technical. All numbers and dimensions and distances, F stops and shutter speeds and ISOs. And yes, they all matter, but somehow that approach never felt very creative to me, and it certainly didn’t chime with how my brain works. Then one day the penny dropped. What if understanding studio lighting simply meant thinking of my softbox as nothing more than a pub window?
I’d grown up with a camera in my hands during my teen years, and when we went to the pub I would take pictures of my mates, lighting them with whatever window was nearby. A softbox, broadly speaking, is the same shape and size. Softbox vs window light is really no contest when you think about it that way – they’re practically the same thing. Once I boiled it down to a light source that was genuinely familiar, everything else became easy.
And that’s really the heart of portrait lighting for non-technical photographers. Whenever I’m lighting someone now, I just think: if they were sitting in a pub, where would the window be? That single question shapes everything, including my softbox position for portraits. Which is why most of my single light portrait setup images have the light slightly to the side rather than overhead. If your background is fine art, you’ll be more familiar with a higher light source pointing down. But my background was the pub and a 35mm camera, so the window was always to the side.
I just position the light until it feels right. Until it feels like somewhere I could have sat holding a pint of beer with my friends having a laugh. And if you don’t believe me, look straight down the camera – it really is as simple as that. Exactly what I would have done all those years ago with a bit of 35mm Kodachrome, or Kodak Gold, on my old Zenith or Kodak camera. It was just such a joy.
Well, it still is. The trick with making studio lighting intuitive is to find the reference points that make it feel familiar to you, even when it sounds really technical. Once you have that, the softbox position for portraits stops being a formula and starts being a feeling. And that, I think, is rather lovely.