Three light setup can be a variety of things.... main, fill, kicker... main, fill, separation.... main, fill, hair... main, fill, background.... the background light does affect the subject by how the the subject is perceived. You can do a lot with three lights, personally I prefer six.

Yes, backround can change how the subject is perceived. That's why I qualified that statement with "doesn't necesarily influence the light hitting the subject". Haha. 6 lights. I don't own that many. I use three strobes and sometimes my onboard as well. I can throw down with 3 strobes, a reflector, the sun, and a white building. Hmmm, let's see. One light as main with spill hitting the reflector for fill. That's good for two. One light as a kicker. Sun as a hairlight. That's two more. The third strobe gelled cto and bounced off of that building to suggest sunset-like conditions. Hmmmm. Only five light sources. I guess you still got me beat. lol....... Time to hit B&H for another strobe.

As an example of the reason I don't count his third light as a light to include in a "three light setup" by MY consideration is this. Imagine taking an environmental portrait of a pilot in the cockpit. You use two lights. One will be main (take your pick, broad or short) and you use the sun for fill. The you place a second slightly behind him off to the side for rim. That's technically 3 lights right there... two strobes and the sun as a hot light. Very hot. lol.

Now, each one of those 100 or so little lights on the instrument panel influences the way the pilot is perceived. You can take some out in the area directly behind his head (let's say 15) to create a darker region just before the viewer would see rim light on the perimeter of his face (to increase constrast and separation) as the eye scans across the image, BUT that would not then be considered an 85 light setup, nor an 88 light setup. It is still a three light setup.

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You can do it with one, two, three or however many you want. I use a main, fill, separation, background, kicker and 2nd main. It's really a matter of what you want to see and how hard you want to work.....

Could you post an example of what your 6 light setup ends up looking like?

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