The other day my friend Randy was over at the house since I needed a model for some lighting techniques I wanted to try.  Leif (my oh-so-helpful husband) refused to model, and as us photographers know, it's hard to set up lighting and get the focusing correct if you're the model, so that left Randy.  He had no problems coming to help me.

I had seen this particular lighting technique several times before.  First was at Photoshop World, second was in Scott Kelby's Light it, Shoot it, Retouch it seminar, and thirdly (and the one that reminded me I wanted to try it), was on an old post at Glyn Dewis' blog.

Roughly, and using my notes from all those sources, this is the setup I used.

The background doesn't matter since the light isn't pointed at it at all, and by having your subject look right into the light, they'll get the most light on their face, with it slowly falling off.  I've seen a bunch of people do black and white conversions for this type of photo, but I kind of like the color version.

It took several (several....) tests of strobe power, distance of subject from light, etc to get it right, but in the end, this is the result I got.