As always, don't practice this in the field when someone's paid you $500 to do an interview of the Chairman of the Board for the year-end video. Practice at home, preferably on someone who's fallen asleep in a chair in the middle of the room and won't mind your blundering about for an hour or so.

It's best to have some space between your subject and the background, not just so you can fit the back light and its stand in, but also to give some distance, usually in the form of an out-of-focus area that you create by a long lens and a wide f-stop. Ten to fifteen feet is optimal, but we don't live in a perfect world and you take what you can get.

Adjusting the three lights can be a bit tricky at first, and it's beneficial to add them one at a time and observe how they affect one another. Add the key light first, and look at it both diffused (through an umbrella or even with just a diffuser in front of a barn door) and bare, then add the fill light. If you're using a hot light rather than a reflector as a fill, you'll also be able to see how it looks diffused and bare. What happens to the key shadows when the fill comes in? Can you describe the changes to the light?

Finally, add the back light. Try it from above aimed down, but also try it on the floor aimed up - what are the differences?

There are a number of places (many of which you can find in the ads of this magazine) that sell "three-point lighting kits" that have three lights, a number of umbrellas, diffusers and carrying cases already assembled. The advantage of these is that they're immediately useful; the disadvantage is that they might contain things you don't really need and wouldn't buy if you were getting your kit one piece at a time. A good way to look at it is that your first lighting kit needn't be your "forever" lighting kit; its job is to help you learn lighting; later, when you know what exactly your kit can't do that you need it to, you can begin replacing parts of it.

Contributing Editor Kyle Cassidy is a visual artist who writes extensively about technology.