Here’s a shot from last night’s Portrait Lighting workshop:

That is a classical portrait:

1. Key light (metered normally); with a softbox.
2. Fill light (two stops darker), also with a softbox.
3. Hairlight (a speedlight using a grid).
4. Another speedlights as a (gelled) background light.

The participants now know how to do this. But you can keep it simple too.

So I turned off all lights except the two speedlights, re-oriented those, and then got this:

The second speedlight is behind the model, aimed at us. And note, I focused very carefully on the left (for us!) eye.

The message: you need to know classica portrait techniques, but once you know these, you can get creative using very simple light. Stay tuned and find out more and more about how to do this.