As a lighting exercise, as you'll see if you take a look at the original (linked below), this wasn't a great success:

.../archives/lighting_diary_2.php

The light is flat, the background is too dark, and so on, and so on, and so on.

As with my first experiment in off-camera lighting this was lit with a 41" shoot-through/translucent umbrella, placed about three feet away and 45° to the right just above my daughter, in a partially darkened room. The light source was a Canon 580 EX II set to 1/4 power. In this instance though I think that I should have either added at least one more light (to brighten the background), or used a better background, or ... well, something else.

Anyway, it was a learning experience, and I am happy with the final image – processed using techniques from my Portraits: part two tutorial – not least because I've posted very few shots of our youngest daughter. At the least, I hope you'll agree that she is quite cute :)

On a partially related matter: we're currently offering a 25% discount on our Photoshop tutorials. If you're interested, the offer is running until the 31st of this month, and there's some further info here:

http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/