Lighting - Side and Front Lighting

Side and front lighting is where the light falls on a particular part of the subject. Side lighting is where the light comes from the side of the subject. This can connotate darkness in the photo, as light is only falling on one side of the subject. Side lighting is good for photographing males, as it accents the jawline, do to where the light hits the subject.

Front lighting is where the light comes from in front of the subject and hits the front of the subject in the photograph. Depending on where the light comes from it produces different effects. if the light comes from above, it produces what is known as "butterfly lighting" this is because it makes a shape that is very similar to a butterfly under the nose. Front Lighting can also be called Glamor lighting. 

Front lighting is usually used to photograph females, as it produces more feminine features, it also softens the jawline and the check bones.

Here are some side and front lighting pictures that i have taken. In order to take these pictures i took a tripod, and used a friend of mines car headlights in order to create the side and front lighting. 

Side Lighting

As you can see, side lighting accents the jawline, and also emphasises the stubble on the bottom of the chin, and the more manly cheek bones. This image is a little bit under exposed, so i could do with increasing the ISO to allow more light into the camera.

Front Lighting

As you can see, Front lighting smooths out the jaw line a little bit, and also smooths out the chin, and the hair line. this image is slightly out of focus, to improve this i could use the manual focus feature, or decrease the aperture and increase the shutter speed.