Chapter 12 — Exercises

Studio lighting is learned by building light, not reading about it — so most of these exercises put a light (or a bedsheet over a window) in your hands and ask you to watch what it does. You do not need a strobe kit: one cheap continuous light or a bright window, a white bedsheet, and a sheet of white foam board will carry you through nearly all of them, and a phone in manual/pro mode is a perfectly good camera for studio work. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do the starred and odd-numbered ones at minimum; model answers and critiques for those are in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep everything — one of these images becomes your Portfolio keeper.

How to self-assess studio work. Unlike a sharp-or-blurry focus test, a lighting exercise rarely has one "correct" frame. Judge yourself on the reasoning and the shadow, not the polish. For every shooting exercise, after you shoot, answer three questions in your notes: (1) What was each light's job? — name it; if you can't, that light shouldn't have been on. (2) What is the shadow doing? — where does it fall, how hard is its edge, how deep is it (roughly what ratio), and is that what you intended? (3) What one change would improve it? — and could you make that change by moving a light rather than buying one? Strong studio practice is the habit of asking those three questions every single time, until they become automatic.

A note for mobile-only and no-flash readers: every exercise below works with a window (a free softbox), a bedsheet (free diffusion), and a piece of white foam board (free fill and reflector). Where an exercise says "light," read "window, lamp, or flash — whichever you have." Continuous light (a window or an LED) is actually easier to learn on than flash, because the shadow you see live is the shadow you get.

Part A — The studio mindset (Build from darkness)

Exercise 12.1 ⭐ — Kill the ambient. Pick a room you can darken. Photograph a subject (a person or an object) with the room lights on and the blinds open, then turn everything off, draw the blinds, and add one single light. Shoot again. Compare: the first frame is "found" light you didn't control; the second is light you built. Write two sentences on what became your decision in the second image that wasn't in the first.

Exercise 12.2 ⭐⭐ — One light at a time. Set up any subject and, if you have more than one light or a reflector, build a setup the §12.1 way: shoot after the key alone, then again after adding the fill/reflector, then again after adding any separation light. Keep all three frames in order. The point is to see what each addition contributes. Caption each with the one thing the new element changed.

Exercise 12.3 ⭐⭐ — Name every light's job. Look at any portrait you admire (yours, a magazine, online). Deduce from the shadows and catchlights how many lights were used and what each one's job was — key, fill, rim/hair, background. Write a sentence per light. If you can't justify a light's presence, say so. This is reverse-engineering, the core studio skill.

Exercise 12.4 ⭐⭐⭐ — Decompose found light. Spend ten minutes in a café, a lobby, or any room with mixed light. Pick one spot and describe its light as a sum of studio-style sources: "one big soft source from the left window (the key), a warm tungsten spill from behind (a rim), an overhead hard spot on the table." Name each as if you'd placed it yourself. You are training the decomposition skill the studio builds — and proving it transfers back outdoors.

Part B — Modifiers and apparent size (Shoot This)

Exercise 12.5 ⭐ — The bedsheet softbox. Tape a white bedsheet or shower curtain a hand's width in front of one bright light or window. Shoot a textured subject (fruit, a face) through it. Then remove the sheet and shoot the bare source. Compare the shadow edges — soft through the sheet, hard without. You have just turned a hard source into a soft one for the cost of a sheet. Keep the pair.

Exercise 12.6 ⭐⭐ — Distance is softness. With your sheeted light (or a softbox), shoot one subject three times: light close (a half-metre), light at a metre, light far (two-plus metres). Same subject, same power adjusted for exposure. Lay the three side by side and rank them softest to hardest. Confirm with your own eyes that closer = softer. Write why, in terms of apparent size.

Exercise 12.7 ⭐⭐ — Spray vs. control. If you have both an umbrella (or open bounce) and a softbox (or a flagged/enclosed source), light the same subject in front of a background with each. Notice how much light lands on the background with the spraying source versus the controlled one. Caption each with how the background tone changed. This is why "soft" and "controlled" are two different choices.

Exercise 12.8 ⭐⭐⭐ — Grid the spill. Improvise a grid: tape a grid of drinking straws (or a section of cut-down honeycomb packaging) over the front of a small hard light. Shoot a subject with and without it. The gridded light should fall in a tighter pool with far less spill. Document what the grid removed from the frame. (No grid? Describe in writing exactly what a grid would change in one of your sprayed-light shots from 12.7.)

Part C — The four patterns (Recreate It)

Exercise 12.9 ⭐ — Walk the key. With one key light and a willing subject (or a textured object that has a "nose," like a small statue or a bottle with a protruding cap), start the light at loop position and slowly walk it around the subject, shooting at each of the four pattern positions: butterfly (high, centered), loop (30–45° side), Rembrandt (45° and higher), split (90° to the side). Label each frame with its pattern name. One light, four looks.

Exercise 12.10 ⭐⭐ — Find the triangle. Recreate Rembrandt lighting specifically. Move your single key until the nose shadow just connects with the cheek shadow and a small bright triangle appears on the shadow-side cheek. Shoot it. Then deliberately move the light too far to the side and too high so the triangle breaks or grows too large — and shoot those failures too. Keep all three and annotate what went wrong in the two failures.

Exercise 12.11 ⭐⭐ — Broad and short. Pick one pattern (loop is easiest) and shoot it twice on the same face without moving the light: once with the subject turned so the lit side faces the camera (broad), once turned so the shadow side faces the camera (short). Compare how wide or narrow the face reads. Caption which is more flattering for this face and why.

Exercise 12.12a ⭐⭐ — Watch the catchlight move. Shoot a tight frame of one eye (or the whole face, then crop in) for each of the four patterns from Exercise 12.9. Notice where the catchlight sits in the eye for each: butterfly puts it high and central, loop and Rembrandt at about 10 or 2 o'clock, split off to one side. Make a little reference sheet pairing each pattern with its catchlight position. You're learning to read a portrait's lighting from the eye alone — the fastest reverse-engineering tell there is.

Exercise 12.12 ⭐⭐⭐ — Recreate Figure 12.4. Reproduce the chapter's "Rembrandt, one light" Described Photograph (Figure 12.4) with your own subject: short lighting, single softbox at 45° and above, dark unlit background, ~85mm-equivalent, the face slimmed, one catchlight, a quiet held expression. Then write your own six-field Described Photograph of your result. The challenge is matching the shadow, not just the position. Self-review: does your triangle sit under the eye, no wider than the eye and no longer than the nose? If it's too big, where is your key wrong?

Part D — Multi-light and ratios (Settings Drill & Build)

Exercise 12.13 ⭐ — Add a reflector. Shoot a portrait with one key and a clearly dark shadow side. Then have someone hold a white foam board (or a white wall stands in) on the shadow side and shoot again. Notice the shadow lift without the modeling disappearing. Caption the before/after with roughly how many stops of shadow you think the reflector lifted.

Exercise 12.14 ⭐⭐ — Set three ratios. With a key and a reflector (or fill light), shoot the same subject at three deliberately different lighting ratios: a gentle ~2:1 (reflector close), a classic ~4:1 (reflector mid-distance), and a dramatic ~8:1 (reflector far or removed). Judge by eye and the histogram. Label each frame with its target ratio and one word for its mood. This is the most important drill in the chapter.

Exercise 12.15 ⭐⭐ — Solve separation. Put a dark-haired or dark-clothed subject in front of a dark background lit only from the front, and shoot the "merge" failure where they blend into the backdrop. Then add a rim or hair light (any small light behind and to the side) and shoot the fix. Document the exact difference a single separation light makes.

Exercise 12.16 ⭐⭐⭐ — Move the light, not the dial. Set a 2:1 ratio. Now, without changing any light's power, deepen it to roughly 8:1 using only the inverse-square law — by moving the fill (or reflector) farther from the subject. Measure your success against the histogram and your eye. Write what you moved and how far, and why distance alone changed the ratio. (Ties directly to Chapter 11's inverse-square law.)

Exercise 12.16a ⭐⭐ — Settings drill (no camera). You arrive to shoot a corporate headshot: a clean, friendly, dimensional portrait on a light-grey background. You have one softbox, one reflector, one spare light, and a roll of grey paper, in a dark room. Write the complete plan before you'd touch anything: which pattern, which ratio, what each light's job is, what the background should read as, and the build order. Then write the starting exposure (mode, ISO, aperture, shutter, WB) and justify each. No camera required — this drills the previsualization that makes a real shoot fast.

Exercise 12.16b ⭐⭐⭐ — Meter a ratio (or fake the meter). If you have a handheld incident meter (or a metering app, or your camera's spot meter as a stand-in), meter the lit side of a portrait (key + fill firing), then the shadow side (fill only), and read the difference in stops — that is your ratio. Set the fill until the shadow reads exactly two stops down (a true 4:1). Compare the metered result to what you'd have guessed by eye. No meter? Write out, step by step, exactly how you would meter a 4:1 ratio, naming what you'd point the meter at and read at each step.

Part E — High-key and low-key (Five Conditions)

Exercise 12.17 ⭐ — Go low-key. In a dark room with one light, shoot a subject low-key: light only the subject, let the background fall to black, keep the shadows deep, add no fill. The whole frame should be mostly dark with light revealing only what you choose. Confirm the subject is still correctly exposed (detail in the highlights). Caption the mood in one word.

Exercise 12.18 ⭐⭐ — Go high-key. Now build high-key: a brightly-lit white wall or sheet behind, a soft low-ratio key on the subject, and generous fill so shadows nearly vanish. Keep the subject correctly exposed (not blown out) while the background reads pure white. Caption it with how it feels compared to your low-key frame.

Exercise 12.19 ⭐⭐ — One subject, both keys. Photograph the same subject both low-key and high-key (this is the chapter's In the Field assignment). Lay the two side by side. Write three sentences on how the same subject reads as two emotionally different images purely because of the tonal world around it.

Exercise 12.20 ⭐⭐⭐ — The five-light study (or five-condition study). Take one subject and shoot it five ways: (1) loop, normal ratio; (2) Rembrandt, normal ratio; (3) split, high ratio; (4) low-key; (5) high-key. Self-select the best three of the five and write one sentence each on why they're the keepers. This is exactly the kind of range a portfolio review wants to see — and your Portfolio keeper may come from it.

Part F — Read the Frame (critique)

Exercise 12.21 ⭐⭐ — Critique a described setup. Read this Described Photograph and name (a) the lighting pattern, (b) the approximate lighting ratio, (c) whether it's broad or short lighting, and (d) one thing you'd change: "A portrait against a black background. The light hits only the right half of the face; the left half is in near-total shadow with no detail. The lit half is turned away from the camera. There is no catchlight in the shadow-side eye. The hair has no separation from the black background and the top of the head disappears."

Exercise 12.22 ⭐⭐ — Diagnose the catchlights. A portrait shows two catchlights in each eye, at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, of roughly equal brightness. What does that tell you about the lighting — how many lights, and what's likely wrong? Prescribe the fix.

Exercise 12.23 ⭐⭐⭐ — The flat-portrait fix. Read this and prescribe a complete re-light: "A headshot where both sides of the face are equally bright, there are no shadows anywhere, the face looks flat like a coin, and the white background is the same brightness as the skin so the subject's edges blur into it." Name what's wrong with the key, the fill, and the background, and write the corrected three-step build.

Part G — Eye Training & the Light Log

Exercise 12.24 ⭐ — The studio light log. Add a studio-minded entry to your Light Log (begun in Chapter 5): find one built light in daily life — a shop window display, a portrait on a poster, a product shot — and write what pattern, ratio, and background-tone choice you think the photographer made. No camera needed.

Exercise 12.25 ⭐⭐ — Read ratios in the wild. For one day, every time you see a professional portrait (ads, magazines, profile photos), guess its lighting ratio from the shadow depth: roughly 2:1, 4:1, or 8:1? Note five and what mood each ratio produced. You're learning to read the number off the shadows.

Exercise 12.26 ⭐⭐⭐ — Previsualize a build. Pick a person you'd like to photograph and, before touching a light, write the complete setup you'd build: which pattern, which ratio, one light or four, what each light's job is, what the background should read as, high/normal/low-key. Then, if you can, shoot it and compare the result to your plan. Previsualizing the light is the studio photographer's superpower.

Part H — Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

Exercise 12.27 ⭐⭐ — Studio meets exposure (Ch. 3). Shoot a studio portrait and deliberately set it once exposed for the highlight side (lit cheek correct) and once exposed for the shadow side (shadow cheek correct). Compare the histograms and the look. Explain which is "correct" and why studio exposure meters the lit side.

Exercise 12.28 ⭐⭐ — Studio meets depth of field (Ch. 4). Light one portrait setup and shoot it at f/2.8 and at f/8 without changing the light (adjust ISO or power for exposure). Compare how the background and the depth of the face render. Note the trade-off between a soft background and keeping the whole face sharp.

Exercise 12.29 ⭐⭐ — Studio meets the red door (Ch. 5, 11). Bring studio thinking to our recurring red door (or your own textured subject). At night or in shade, light it with a single off-camera flash or a sheeted lamp as a deliberate key at a raking angle, choosing a ratio that makes the texture pop. Compare to the golden-hour version from Chapter 5. Same door — but now you made the light.

Exercise 12.30 ⭐⭐⭐ — Composition meets light (Ch. 6). Build a studio image where the lighting and the composition both direct the eye to the same point: place the subject on a rule-of-thirds power point (Chapter 6) and make that point the brightest, most-modeled area of the frame. When light and composition agree, the eye has nowhere else to go. Critique whether yours succeeds.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 12.31 ⭐⭐⭐ — One light, ten portraits. Using only a single light source (plus a reflector and a background you can darken or brighten), make ten genuinely different portraits of one subject in one session: vary the pattern, the ratio, broad/short, and high/low-key. Lay all ten out together. The lesson — the one that proves you've understood this chapter — is that almost all of studio lighting's range lives in how you use one light. Pick the strongest for your Portfolio and write why it beats the other nine.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Build the light yourself before reading them — in the studio, the act of moving the lamp and watching the shadow move is the entire lesson.