About the image

In this portrait from 2022, my friend/model Lael sat on the floor with her back against a wood-paneled wall. There was ambient light inside the Airbnb unit, but that was overpowered by a single Godox A200 strobe. On the strobe was a large (48″) rectangular softbox with a grid. My camera is a Nikon Z6 I, with a Nikon Z-mount 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR lens. I positioned the strobe at 45° to Lael, for loop lighting but not quite Rembrandt lighting. My camera was on the strobe setting. I colour-corrected the image in post in Photoshop, and for the final image I used Nik Software’s Silver Efex for B&W conversion. The mood we were going for was “Despair”, and to get there Lael thought back to a dark place in her past, and we nailed the shot. Unfortunately, we didn’t think of making any BTS shots during the photoshoot.