I dusted off my Alien Bee’s AB800 strobe to prep for some portrait work, draped my black muslin over my backdrop holder, manually pre-focused my 17-40mm lens (very small working conditions), and was happy to come up with this self-portrait.

Self-portrait with Strat

I’m actually sitting on an unseen stool here, so that was what I prefocused the lens on.  I thought I’d try a pretty stark sidelighting angle with the AB800 angled slightly downward on camera left to create a “masculine lighting effect”.  I do have the diffused beauty dish adapter, so I left that mounted on the AB800.  I’m happy that there was not much light spilling on the background, which helps contribute to the somber and mysterious mood of this image.

One of the best parts of shooting on black is not worrying about background exposures!