I have been an amateur photographer using studio equipment for a couple years now (photography is still a hobby for me).
I have learned most about lighting and such from Dean Collins and find his DVDs I purchased from Software-Cinema to be the best out there in my opinion.
I have a full 3 light set of 1000 w/s fan cooled Novatrons which kick butt and do everything I need them to.
We took our daughter's first birthday photo for the party invitation this past Saturday and I used a hairlight for the first time since her mother puts these bows on her head everywhere we go, so naturally our daughter had one of these on her head.
The hair light certainly brings the photo into a whole new dimension in terms of highlighting important parts of the head and shoulders. I just couldn't believe it!
My hairlight consisted of only a PW'd 580EXII on manual shot through a mini 12x16 softbox pointed just over the backdrop and out so that the feather of light would be all that would hit her head.
I was shooting the strobes at f/16 and the hair light at f/11 was perfect. A silver reflector was camera right while the main light was camera left with a 4x8 translucent scrim from photoflex between the barebulb strobe on full power and the subject area. For fill, I used another umbrella'ed strobe way back on f/11. Effectively, I had 4 lights running.
I love this stuff and cannot wait for more invitation photos.
For those of you wanting to see the photo, sorry, I don't put my shots online in case they end up where I do not want them to; but trust me, the hairlight worked wonders.
The best part is my wife loved the photos.
Oh, the camera equipment was a 1ds III with 85L 1.2.
