“Thousands of pages have been written about lighting. Thousands of hours of video. Cinematographers obsess over it. We try to keep it simple: you want enough light, but not too much. Today’s smart cameras will try to brighten what they think is a dark scene, so a dark background may trick your camera into overexposing your subject. And the inverse happens if your background is too bright. To make sure the camera auto-exposes for you and not the background, make sure your subject (you + your work) fills more than 50% of the screen. Also, high contrast lighting will cast dark shadows which hide your work (and make you look older). You beat that by using multiple light sources, and by making those sources big and diffuse (or “soft”). A wide source, like a picture window, makes for soft shadows. You can accomplish a similar thing by diffusing smaller bright sources. For more about basic video lighting there’s a good short explainer with some easy setups over here.”