Butterfly Lighting (not terribly serious thread)

[kdthomas]

OK, so I think I know how to spot butterfly lighting.

But ... why is butterfly lighting called butterfly? Everything I have read says "because, dummy, there's a butterfly-shaped shadow under the nose."

Really? Where?

This is apparently an example of butterfly lighting:


Aaaaaaand here's a butterfly:


THERE ARE NO SHADOWS IN THIS IMAGE THAT (TO ME) RESEMBLE A BUTTERFLY.

Is the butterfly flying towards me? Has the butterfly been cut with scissors into the shape of a boomerang?

Discussion please.

 

[Vtec44]

It's just a name of a type of lighting style. The shape can also be at the nostrils. It sounds better than "two lights where the key light is directly on top about 3.712' above and fill light is directly under exactly 1.756' " style. Why over analyzing it?

 

[sm4him]

I don't think the OP is overanalyzing. I think they are just being curious, and slightly amusing.

I often wonder about things like this; why we pick certain names for things. Actually, I wonder about a LOT of things that many people would--and do--call overanalyzing.
Okay. I overanalyze.

OP: I don't know. Only thing I see is that if you place the butterfly on the woman, so that its head is on her lips, the top part of the wings would sort of follow the same line as the shadow under her nostrils.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Unless it turns out someone actually knows the answer.

 

[Forkie]

The example you posted is a particularly shallow variation on the style, so the "butterfly" is not particularly visible. But if the key light is closer to the subject, the shadow deepens and I guess it does kind of resemble a butterfly. Or at least a moth!

Butterfly lighting is also called Paramount lighting, since the style was popularised by photographer George Hurrell in Hollywood during the 1930s

 

[Braineack]

you're looking at the butterfly from the top, not the front.

 

[Designer]

If you look at this much:

And use your imagination, it is there, just under her nose.

 

[Braineack]

I like the term clam-shell better to more describe the position of the lights; not the shadow cast.