Strobist question

[TeomanDemirhan]

Entire umbrella.

 

[qleak]

Entire umbrella.

Maybe post a test pic or 2 with all your settings listed. There are quite a few people on here that can tell how a picture is lighted just by looking at it.

 

[Village Idiot]

Composites with lighting modifiers are viable. Unfortunately, I don’t have all the photos involved in this pictures on the interwebs, but this is indeed a composite like you described. This was shot with the camera obviously on a tripod with the original photo of the subject and lighting modifiers taken and then a second and third shot of the background without the subject and lighting modifiers in frame at different exposures.

The original photo was added in to Photo Shop as a layer over the backgrounds and the modifiers were then edited out along with the milk crate the subject was sitting on. It does take longer than just taking a photo with everything out of frame, but sometimes that’s not an option for the photos you want and personally it’s worth the time involved if you get the photograph you’re going for.