Perfect Lighting Setup for Any Location

How to get perfect lighting no matter the location

This is a helpful tutorial to use when you need to know how to get perfect lighting for your photoshoots.

Pye Jirsa of the SLR Lounge YouTube shares their framework for perfect lighting in any situation and shows how to use it behind the scenes for a destination photoshoot.

How to set up lighting to take amazing on-location photos

What is the CAMP Method for lighting?

This is particularly helpful for on-location shoots in hard to access areas because you won’t have as much flexibility for bringing gear.

Composition
Ambient Light
Modify/Add light
Photograph

This is a great way to organise your shoots and also to help you to nail the key elements of a good photograph

How to Get Perfect Lighting With Camp: Composition

What is composition? Composition is how all of the elements in the scene are put together. Objects, people, sky, etc are all elements of composition.

Think about how you want to lay out your scene, and where you want to position the elements to create an interesting composition. Answering these questions will help you to place your subjects well and to take great photos.

If you are photographing people in the scene it will help you communicate where to have them stand.

Importantly for lighting, thinking through composition will help you lock in the right camera and lens settings for your shoot. Your focus and shutter speed settings will vary depending on the scene.

A: Ambient Light

The next step is to analyze the ambient or natural light of your shot and to work out how it helps of hinders your shot. This will help you consider what you might need to alter with additional lighting.

You usually can’t change the ambient light source unless you’re in a studio. So if you are at an outside location you will need adjust your composition elements to the lighting available.

Change the composition if needed to lock in the desired way the ambient light is affecting your shot.

How to Get Perfect Lighting With Camp: Modify and/or Add Light

Next, you can use additional light sources to modify or add to the ambient light.

If part of your shot looks great with the ambient light of your scene, but an area is too dim, set up a monolight flash positioned to bring that area to life!

Off-camera flash lights on a stand with a remote that syncs with the shutter speed of your camera are super helpful for this.

When placing your additional light, place it a little bit higher than your subject so the light is coming slightly downward. This will help the photo feel more natural.

How to Get effect Lighting with CAMP: Pose/Photograph

Now that you have all the lighting elements locked in, you’re ready to shoot that winning photograph!

This is a great opportunity to look again at the posing of your subjects to make sure it’s working well with your lighting set up. Then you can make any tweaks you need.

Pose the subject or subjects to have the lighting hitting where you want to draw the viewers eyes to in the final photo.

Use these four steps to set for how to get perfect lighting for any location!

Whether it’s a hard to get to location or an indoor shoot, these four steps will make sure you get the perfect lighting setup.

Improve your photography skills with this comprehensive guide!

Which of the steps above do you need to apply to your photoshoot lighting?

Comment below!