Here's a good lighting tip from photographer David Stearn: Keep It Simple. The tip and David's photograph are featured, along with the work of some top professional photographers, in my new book, Studio and Location Lighting Secrets.

Take it away David Stearn!

My advice is to start with a simple setup – and to keep it simple. Here I used one light basically positioned in front of and above the subject. I then placed a gold reflector on a table at waist level in front of the subject to bounce some of the light into the shadows on the model face that were created by the main light.

That’s it!

My background was a gray paper sweep. I positioned the model away from the backdrop to maintain the color tone of the gray.

I post-processed the image in Lightroom and Photoshop CS4.

Finally I used Portrait Professional to retouch the image.

Credits are as follows:
Model - Sunny Dayz Sunny's portfolio on Model Mayhem.
Makeup Artist is Celestine McGee.
David's Web site.

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I've known David for about eight years, simply calling him David. Well, I know another David, David Stern, and unfortunately, I used Stern rather than Stearn in my book. Sorry David (Stearn).