When you start to use artificial lighting for your photography it can at times be quite baffling on where to put your lights to get the effect you want..although this does come with good teaching and practice this little article might just save you a few heart aches and wasted shooting time.
There are several lighting set ups i use some use just two lights and others use more but by looking at the diagrams i will post on this thread hopefully you can build up your own set ups and learn how to use them well.
I will start off by adding one set up every few days..if you do use these set ups why not leave a posting to let me know or perhaps a photo you have taken with them to show others

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Nice idea and very selfless of you. The one suggestion I would make though, and I'm always amazed that it doesn't seem to be a standard feature of lighting diagrams, is that including the height relative to the model of each of the objects is paramount to the effect and so would be a welcome addition if possible.

Thank you PGP ok as to regards to the height it really does depend on what type of effect your looking at getting..generally if its a fashion type of shot then this is always a good starting point i am going to assume we have soft boxes to use and work with....if say you position two soft boxes at around 45 degress either side front centre of your model..the first soft box the height of that would be around thus:..position the bottom part of the soft box roughly at the chin height of the model as you look at the model with your camera this soft box could be on your left..this is the light the model would be mainly lit up with..the other soft box to your right i would start at around here...top of soft box around bust height sloping downwards so that it lights the bottom half too...on the other hand if your just using a beauty dish then this would give you an entirely different type of lighting..one beauty dish and no other lighting used..position the dish again the bottom of this around chin height of your model..this effect will give you quite a nice tapered lighting down the body of the model untill it fades into blackness..if you need an example of this then look at my profile theres a picture of Beth and Annmarie in a nice ruby red dress..only a beauty dish was used for the lighting in this shot and you can see how that available lighting tapers into darkness which was completed during editing of the shot.
Hope this helps.

After watching this thread it dosent seem to be a popular one so im not going to continue with it i did think it might have helped photographers as there does seem to be a lot of uncertanty with lighting on photographs.

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Personally, I'm absolutely loving this thread - probably because it reminds me of the theatre lighting I did at Uni which I really enjoyed. I'm guessing there are a lot of people who could benefit from this sort of help, and maybe some of them are taking down notes from your info but not replying?

Anyway, it's always nice when people post helpful information and advice, so thank you very much!

TopMember

I also think this is a great thread - keep it up please

Thank you for your comments i was wondering if anyone was getting any useful tips from this thread as i know how i felt when i first started out..lighting was a big no no for me and i think its one of those things where you never really stop learning..the intention to me starting this thread was to give photographers some basic type set ups to get you all going and then you could adjust lighting diagrams to suit your own type of photography..ok i will continue it was just getting a little awkward because i had no idea on if people were actually using the light set ups..incidently i use the same sets ups as most of my pics on my own profile are using lighting like these ones im posting.

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No worries and thank you! As the one in front of the camera I don't technically need to know these kinds of things, but I have had photographers occasionally ask me if I know how such-and-such is done with lighting, so this is useful. Plus, when I'm too old for this gig and switch to the other side of the lens, it will all be good info to have in the back of my mind, haha.

Pmsl@ Nixie...i have seen times when a model has helped me out with lighting some days my grey matter dont seem to work aswell as it used to so yes learn all you can Nixie and im sure you will have a head start if you come around to my side of the camera !!!!

We are near the end of this quick course on lighting diagrams so i hope they have been of some use to you.