Picture Perfect Paramount Lighting | Inside Fashion and Beauty Photography with Lindsay Adler

Lindsay Adler

Lindsay Adler is a fashion photographer, educator, and author based in New York City. You can follow her work and see her photography on her website, lindsayadlerphotography.com, or on Instagram @lindsayadler_photo.

Paramount lighting can be dramatic, flattering, sculpting.. but also sometimes challenging to achieve! In this video, I’ll show you some of my favorite tools to help me achieve picture-perfect paramount lighting.

To begin with, what IS paramount lighting? Paramount light, as you may assume, was named after Paramount Pictures movie studios, is a term used to refer to a certain look and position of the light.

Paramount lighting is when the light is placed directly in front of the subject at a slightly downward angle, creating a shadow directly beneath the subject’s nose. When the light is high enough, at times this will be called ‘butterfly lighting’ because the shadow under the nose may resemble the wings of a butterfly.

There are two main challenges with Paramount lighting:

1. Positioning the stand

(1) When the subject is facing straight on toward the camera, you’ll need to have the stand perfectly centered in front of them. What does that mean for you? It means that your light stand will likely be in the way of your shot and composition! The best way to solve this problem is to use a boom arm (or mini boom). This allows you to have the standoff to the side of the frame but still have the light directly boomed in front of your subject. It is also easy to get a higher angle of light for that top-down shadow effect. I recommend the Avenger D600 mini boom because it is strong, stable, and has a telescoping adjustable arm. Be sure if you are using a heavy modifier to add a counterweight to the arm to balance out the arm for stability!

2. Adjusting with the subject’s movement

(2) The next challenge is that when the subject moves, you’ll need to move your light. You are looking to maintain that shadow perfectly centered underneath the subject’s nose. If the subject moves even an inch to the left or the right, the shadow will move on the face. The best way to keep up with these movements is to use a roller stand. This stand on wheels is stable and allows you to easily make adjustments to the position of the light to compensate for your subject’s movements.

For this particular image, I used 2 strobes, a roller stand, and a boom arm. Let’s take a closer look.

Conceptually I wanted to achieve a traditional ‘old Hollywood’ look to the lighting so we used a Magnum Reflector as the modifier on the main light. A Magnum reflector is a large silver dish that creates a harder light source. Because of the size of the modifier and the texture inside of the dish, the light is hard but still creates a smooth result on the skin. I overexposed the face (approx 1 stop) to achieve that very high key and glowing result as was common in traditional Hollywood glamour photography.

Next, the subject’s dark hair was blending into the background so I added another strobe behind the subject. I used a 10-degree grid with the light on a floor stand to create a beautiful, subtle glow behind the subject. If I wanted to achieve a more polished look I could have added multiple rim lights and other highlights, but in this instance, I decided to keep a simple 2 light setup.

Interested in learning more about the lighting that goes into fashion and beauty photography? Check out these guides on 42 West:

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