... is where I pointed the camera as soon as I got home with the new equipments. I started off with the two PhotoPro 300D studio lights placed on either side of the camera for an even lighting. But, soon it was obvious that even lighting could be flat and boring!

In the second attempt, I had one PhotoPro 300D at the front right side and the other one at rear right side to shine the hair. For a very dramatic / harsh effect, I even took out the umbrella. The background comes from a curtain in the living room.

The shot was taken with the Canon EOS 7D mounted with the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens. I did not have much choice as the setting more or less dictated it. The flash needed an exposure time of 1/200s and I used that much. I wanted a thin DoF and may have used a f/2.8 aperture or so, but given the available space and the distances at which the lights were kept, even the ISO-100, f/5.6 that I used was too bright. I eventually, reduced the brightness of the image by two stops using Digital Photo Professional.

Finally, with all this setup, we took a few shots. The TV was on and for a moment in between, she was lost in some event in the TV and that gave me my candid moment for this shot. I had the Vivitar 285HV firing from front left side for fill, but it did not work very well - I guess it need a larger sync time, which I could not have used. So, the left portion came out darker than I wanted with some details lost.

In the next iteration, the front and rear lights were at the left side. I placed the lights further away and had a white reflecting wall on the right side to fill the light. This - it looks like - worked better than the Vivitar. The settings are similar to the first picture, except that the aperture was an even narrower f/6.3.

Studio lighting is an art that could not be learned in a few attempts and I am already overwhelmed by the amount of literature in Internet on this topic. Hoping to come up with better pictures in the next iteratons!