Looking at the works of others is something I like to do in my spare time, and I tend to be drawn to negative space. Negative space is kind of what it sounds like; a whole lot of emptiness that emphasizes your subject. It doesn’t have to be darkness like in these photos, it could be water surrounding your subject or mountains, but it does tend to create a sort of void that becomes its own sort of subject that compares or compliments your actual subject. It comes in handy with theater photography, among other session types.
For this session, I wanted an isolated window, which I don’t have, so I made one in the basement. That’s just plexiglass held up by clamps and tripods with black backdrops around them. The light is just a speedlight on the other side of the window. To get the right reaction, I went with a toddler because a toddler is going to be fascinated with what the heck this window is doing there. Then she pulled a chair up and got a ball, so it worked out.
This was just a single light, a speedlight, with no modifiers besides the plexiglass. There really wasn’t much more to this.