This other shot of my wife, Lou, was taken on the same day as this shot. I wanted a mixture of shots of her looking at the camera and away from the camera, as well as happy and 'blank' (rather than sad!)
I think this one is my favourite photo from the shoot. I was really pleased with the lighting set-up, which was to use both off-camera flashes and make them soft by putting them quite close to her. The Canon flash had a Lumiquest softbox on it and was pointing up towards her from about 3 feet away.
The second flash (the Pentax) had a mini umbrella mounted on it and was about 8 inches away from Lou's forehead shooting straight at her (my hand with the flash is just out of the shot, above the frame and just to the left of centre).
I started with an aperture of about f/10, but opened it wider until I got to f/6.3, which gave a really pleasing result. The 1/160th shutter speed was just enough to allow the grey wall to bleed into the shot, but if I had been able to shoot faster - say, a 1/1000th - I would've tried to blacken the wall completely. The triggers don't allow for anything faster than a 1/200th, unfortunately.
I really recommend getting a Strobella mini umbrella (link on the Flickr page for this photo) as it's such a handy and lightweight piece of kit (and at around 6" collapsed, it takes up little room in the kitbag).
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