This image was done at a recent session in a clients home. We did a few shots using window light alone bit there was a very interesting piece of furniture that I wanted to use as the background. I had the client lye on the floor in front of the hutch and began photographing.
The window light coming from the glass doors created a nice light on the subjects face but the hutch went into darkness and lacked the separation needed for the subject to stand out so I had the subject move more into the centre of the room with her back toward the the window. This made the subjects face very dark relative to the hutch but gave a nice light on the hutch. It also gave that beautiful rim light that you can see in her hair. I then put a speedlight into a 2×2 Apollo soft box and used it to light the subjects face. Now I had total exposure control and was able to adjust the relative exposure of my background over the subjects face and created this image.
Using this technique allows the photographer to separately control the exposure of what is light by the window light and what is light by the speedlight. I could have easily
chosen to have the background darker or lighter but I felt that this was the best balance for the image.
The final image was tweeked in Lightroom with some skin softening and a vignette. Lightroom 5 has a new tool called a radial filter that allows the user to centre the vignette anywhere in the image. I love this tool.