Better late than never.

Thanks to the famous Joe McNally for sharing an infinite amount of photo insight, day after day, free of charge.  He's where I first learned of this technique.  Photogs, know that if you follow his blog you'll earn a doctorate in lighting.  Which is why I need to follow him more :)

Alrighty then.  I'll start with the image, then work backwards.  It's really quite simple:

Yep, that's Kerbi Sue, a week old.  And of course, my other babe, Julie.  It's nothing award winning (obviously), some will prefer it without the texture, but bottom line is that it looks like it was taken during the day.  At a time with wonderful diffused, warm light.  And directional.  But not harsh.  It's the perfect natural light!

But it's not natural light.

To the contrary, it was pitch black outside.  Here are a couple pics of the outside, and also my lighting setup.

As you can see in the above pic, the lighting setup is simple.  Elinchrom Ranger head with the RangerRX Pack, standard metal reflector.  And secondly, yes, that is in fact a white bed sheet.  I bought it a couple hours before from Walmart.  I think it ran me $6.  Gaffer tape it, or duck tape it.  And all the sudden, you have a window sized softbox.  And as you know, the bigger your light source in relation to the subject, the softer and more magical the light.

For you nerds that want to know strobist info: 160th, 4.0.  And I forget what my pack was pumping out.

As Joe has demonstrated before, you can also do this with a speedlight (or better yet a couple or a few to lessen recycle time), so long as you invest in one of the many options to get the speedlight off your hotshoe.

Now, you can also create a much different quality of light by removing the bed sheet (thx captain obvious).  Light that looks just like a sunset or sunrise streaming through the window.  I'll save that for next time...

Cheers to cool, and easy, lighting tricks.