I've always wanted my photography education on here to be free, so although there is no paywall to any of my -Technique Tuesdays-, any and all support is greatly appreciated. ❤️
PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book.
||
PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book. ||
The idea of including ‘eye-lights’ in cinema has existed for nearly as long as cinema itself, but for some reason, this technique is rarely used in photography.
Catchlights are the little sparkle of highlight in the subjects’ eye
Eye-Lights not Catchlights
Let’s first clarify a couple of things in case we’re not sure exactly what I mean by ‘eye-lights’. First off, I don’t mean catchlights. Yes, these are the bright, specular highlights in the subject's eyes caused by seeing the direct reflection of a light source in the fluid of an eyeball, but these aren’t eye-lights.
I’m sure most of us are very familiar with catchlights, as they are fairly unanimously seen as a fundamental rule of good portrait lighting. Nearly every well-lit portrait we see contains catchlights in the subject's eyes, and for good reason. Cathlights are reflections of the light; as we know, good lighting is all about displaying shape, and highlights greatly contribute to that.
Why Catchlights are Important
But including catchlights is more than simply abiding by the laws of good lighting. Failing to include catchlights in an eye will often leave the subject looking lifeless. Of course, we can exploit this to our advantage, and many cinematographers purposely avoid catchlights or even remove them in post-production to signify a dead or dying person.
The left-hand image doesn’t have catchlights in the subject's eyes, but they are clearly visible in the right-hand image. I think it should be pretty obvious just how dramatic a difference this makes in the subject's eyes and overall look.
So yes, including catchlights in our subjects' eyes is crucial to ensuring they look their best as they will literally look ‘bright-eyed’ and very much alive.
Now that we’ve cemented down what catchlights are, understanding what eye-lights are will be much easier.
Eye-Lights in Cinema
Eye-lights are often used in cinema to create those catchlights in the subject’s eyes. At first, this may seem odd because if the subject is lit correctly, the eyes should show the catchlights, right? This is typically true for us photographers as our job is to light our subject and only the subject, but that's not always the case in cinema. Many film sets will be about lighitng the scene and surroundings that allow the subject to exist in it believably, without them looking ‘stuck on’ or ‘over-lit’. When lighting in this way, the subject’s eyes are sometimes left in darkness. Think strong top lights or even dramatic side lights. This will light the subject to dictate the mood and drama of a scene, but the eyes may not be receiving the light to create catchlights.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The very red scene above shows the character in only red, and although the red catchlight is visible in the eyes of Robert De Niro, it’s incredibly dim. So, although we can see the tiny and dim red catchlights, we predominantly see the far brighter white ones. It’s these eye-lights that are creating the catchlights, but more importantly, that’s all they are doing, as there is no white light on our subject’s face. Those eye-lights only create catchlights in the eye and nothing more.
Havoc (2025)
Without the eye-light from below, the eyes lose a lot of impact.
Havoc (2025)
A more recent movie, but the same eye-light technique is being used here, although for different reasons.
You’ll often see the eye-light technique being used when this subject is heavily lit from the side. The extreme edge light is a popular and dramatic lighting look, but it can leave the front of a subject looking very dark. Can you imagine how dark and lost the subject would look without the eye-light here?
The cinematographer has simply placed a light source very low and likely close to the camera here. When Tom Hardy looks down, we see the strong edge and top light, and although those lights do not reach his eyes when he's looking down, the eye-light below will cast catchlights.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
There were many huge washes of colour in Blade Runner 2049, and although many of the scenes were flooded with colour, the subject's eyes still benefited from a clean catchlight to really stand out. In the above image, we see Ryan Gosling with his back to the main light, and although his left eye is clearly hidden from the light behind him, that eye still has a glimmer of catchlight present in that darkness.
Hellboy (2019)
Hellboy (2019)
Another example of very strong edge lighting on our subject with almost no light on the front of the face at all, but still, if you look closely, you’ll see a catchlight in both eyes. Once again, imagine how utterly lost in darkness the face on camera-right would be without that glimmer of a catchlight, thanks to an eye-light.
There is a need for eye-lights in a shot for many reasons. Sometimes dramatic side lights leave little light on the front of the face, sometimes the scene is washed in a specific colour, and the eyes simply don’t pick up the source and sometimes strong directional light from above limits any actual light from reaching the eyes. In these instances, using a supplementary eye-light can help add dimension, depth and more importantly, life back into the subject.
Eye-Lights in Portraiture
As I mentioned above, this technique won’t be needed for many of your portrait lighting setups, as for the most part, you’ll be lighting your subject ‘properly’ with an appropriately placed key-light. But for more dramatic lighting setups where you’re trying to tell a story with lighting and not simply trying to illuminate your subject, this little technique could be useful.
The premise is super-simple: place a light directly in front of your subject and move it until the catchlight appears in the subject’s eyes. This is easily done if the subject is looking away from the camera, and remember, nearly every film you’ve ever seen has the subject looking away from the camera, so it's easy to place an eye-light where you need it. But if the subject is looking straight at the camera, as with many of our portraits, we need to be a little smart with it.
The easiest solution is to place the light directly on the camera. That way, no matter where you are, if the subject is looking at you, the eye-light will be present in the form of catchlights in the subject’s eyes.
I’m sure you can think of a variety of ways to achieve this, but for me, the easiest way to attach a light to your camera, is via the hot-shoe.
As you can see in the images above, my light is attached to the camera's hot-shoe via a ball-joint. This is so I can mount the light at a 90-degree angle, which keeps it very close to the lens axis. Plus, this right angle also allows the light to be slightly above the lens when I’m shooting in portrait orientation, which in turn helps keep the catchlight above the lens in the subjects’ eyes.
Why Use an LED Light?
If you’re unfamiliar with this light, it’s a small LED light called a NEO 3 Pro from Rotolight. It’s very lightweight and comfortable to have attached to the camera, even with a battery in place, as you can see in the shot above. But why use this LED light over a speedlight?
I prefer this LED light over a speedlight for two reasons, and that’s simply, size and power.
Size
Firstly, size. This LED light is about 6 inches across. That means it will appear as a far larger catchlight in the subject's eyes compared to the smaller surface area of a speedlight’s flash window.
The illuminated area of the LED light is far larger than the flash and this will result in a far larger cathlight in the subjects eyes.
In the image above, you can clearly see how much bigger the actual illuminated area of the LED light is compared to the speedlight. Remember, a catchlight is a specular highlight in the eye, which is simply a direct reflection of a light, so it’s this reflection size we need to be thinking about, not its brightness.
Power
Secondly, power. Remember that a cathlight is a direct reflection of a light in the subject's eyes; that's all this light is typically doing, and it's often not lighting the subject in any meaningful way. Think about those cinematic examples I gave you above. They showed the eye-light doing almost nothing to illuminate the subjects; they were just there to show up as a catchlight in the eye, nothing more. With this very minimal output in mind, even a speedlight can be too powerful and, as such, may ruin the lighting on the subject by doing more than just appearing as a cathlight. Even set to their lowest powers, speedlights are often fairly powerful, and remember, our speedlight is mounted to our camera, so they will often be very close to our subjects too.
Yes, you could use ND gels to limit speedlights' power output, but I just find an LED far simpler and easier to use, especially given that the surface area of the LED produces noticeably larger catchlights as well.
Examples
Below is a shoot from a little while ago in which I used this NEO 3 PRO LED light on my hot-shoe to create eye-lights in the models eyes. I used this technique here not because of the dramatic light from behind or heavy colour washes, but because the light on the front of the model was extremely flat, and that flat light simply wasn’t very visible in the eyes via a catchlight.
Pay close attention to the catchlights in the images below, as they are all created using that eye-light technique.
Click on any of the images to fit them to the screen.
Featured Model: Irina Ludosanu
Taking a closer look
I’ve just gone back into the raw files of this shoot to see if I had any before-and-after images of the eye-light being used and I was able to dig out a couple of early images. Hopefully, this shows a little of what I was trying to achieve with the eye-light.
Please note that these are unretouched raws.
Click to enlarge - Image on the left has no eye-light on the camera, whereas the image on the right does.
It should be clear to see the difference and even though all of the cinematic examples I showed above were of fairly dark and often backlit images, even images with a clear light in front of the subject can lack a meaningful catchlight….. especailly if you’re limited for space and are clearly standing in front of it!
As always, thank you for reading. Hopefully, you learnt something new today. If you did, be sure to check out the rest of my articles. With over a decade’s worth of -Technique Tuesdays- to work through, I’m sure you’ll find something else of interest.
I've always wanted my photography education on here to be free, so although there is no paywall to any of my -Technique Tuesdays-, any and all support is greatly appreciated. ❤️
PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book.
||
PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book. ||
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I livestream every other Tuesday night via YouTube and there I answer your questions, critique your shots, take community images into Photoshop to work on them and discuss all manner of lighting tips and techniques. I look forward to seeing you and your work there real soon. Jake Hicks Photography - YouTube
