Wife maternity take two - C&C please

[stepollard1]

How did you achieve such low lighting ? Loveley shot, really moving

 

[OrionsByte]

How did you achieve such low lighting ? Loveley shot, really moving

I made a homemade 4-foot by 1-foot strip light out of a cardboard box, tin foil, and paper towels as a diffusing medium. It was set up vertically just out-of-frame to the right and slightly behind my wife.

I didn't use any special background or anything; it was just taken in my living room. The key is to make sure that your camera settings are not allowing any ambient light to register. Once you've got those settings dialed in, then you turn your flash on and adjust it to give you the exposure you want, making sure to have the flash (with whatever modifications) as close to the subject as possible. Having it close will mean that it will be really bright on your subject, but it should fall off before it casts enough light on the surrounding environment to expose anything based on the settings you've chosen.

You can read up more about this kind of technique at strobist.