Key things to keep in mind when on a video call are:
- Daytime calls are best because they’re easiest to light.
- But even when they’re daytime, it’s easy to be poorly lit.
- When at night, or if you have no windows, lighting is hard.
- With one lamp at night, it’s possible to look okay.
- And with two lamps used “in stereo,” you can look great.
Rechargeable LED light sticks ($15/each) are incredibly versatile. And an LED ring lamp with USB port ($45) or less-nerdy and with color ($50) delivers a nice feeling when you’re working late at night.
With just one lamp and one window, it’s possible to look great on video. It means you may need to move your furniture around in your house. But that’s okay because you’re expecting to be stuck at home for a long time. Unfortunately.
When you have a window behind you, it makes it hard for your audience to see you. But if you have a lamp that can light your face, it can look quite nice — and it makes your video feel literally “daytime.”
The professional scenario on the right (below) is called “Three-point lighting” and it’s how most interviews are lit. An extra bit of magic happens if you put a not-too-bright lights behind you in frame to create more dimensionality.
Two common nighttime (or if you have no windows) lighting scenarios while on Zoom, etc. for giving more of a professional impression (versus a less professional one) are presented below. With just two lamps it’s possible to look great on video. It means you may need to move your furniture around in your house. But that’s okay because you’re expecting to be stuck at home for a long time. Unfortunately.
The further away you position a light, the less impact it has on brightness. So placing your lamps is a way to more carefully light your frames. Be sure to use LED lighting to be safe when tweaking how you are lit.
Note that in the “professional” case it’s possible to do get the multi-point lighting effect with just two lamps by crafting a reflector out of foil and a used packing envelope (larger is better). Just bounce the main light off of your reflector.
This presentation as a pre-release PDF is now available 👇. The appendix on Remote and Distributed Work comes with the mailing list signup further down.
Sign up for the Resilience Tech Briefing with no more than 2022 characters, zero images, and all in plain-text.
#mc_embed_signup{background: none; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width:100%;} /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */