Design Nomenclature / Light & Optics

Butterfly lighting

Also called Paramount lighting, glamour lighting

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

Key placed high and directly on the camera axis, casting a small symmetrical shadow beneath the nose and a matching one under the chin. It flatters cheekbones and suppresses skin texture, which is why the 1930s portrait departments standardized on it.

Plan view with the key on the camera axis between camera and subject — marked zero degrees, so it is directly above the lens rather than off to a side — steeply raised, the subject facing square to the lens, annotated to say the shadow it drops beneath the nose is the symmetrical butterfly the pattern is named for.

Not to be confused with

Origin

Butterfly for the shape of the nose shadow; Paramount for the studio whose portrait department made it house style.

How this term connects

Fill lightHigh keyKey lightLoop lightingRembrandt lightingButterfly lighting
Related Confused with