For this editorial portrait of a former political prisoner who was recently reunited with his family in the U.S., I wanted to use strong, dramatic lighting to reflect his resolve he used to resist his captures. I set my Profoto B2 strobes up in his daughter’s living room while Bekjanov was being interviewed.
The background was a light brick wall above the fireplace. I placed one B2 head with a 1×3 stripbox ( vertical) camera right and slightly behind as my key light. For the rim light, I used my Profoto OCF beauty dish camera left. This is the opposite of what I usually do. My standard is to use the beauty dish as my key. There was some ambient window light in the room, which I overpowered using high-speed sync at 1/400 of a second, Iso 125 at f/2.8.
From this camera setting I took a close up shot of his face in TTL, then kicked my Profoto Air Remote over to manual to lock in the setting. I made a plus half-stop adjustment to key light and dialed the rim light down 1 stop to keep the subject’s gray hair from blowing out. This is the first time I’ve used the strip light as a key. I’m liking the look! Nikon D850, Nikon 70-200 2.8
Adventures in Off-Camera Flash 