Viktoriia Alieko (Patreon)

My heart aches for Ukraine - but like many of us, there is nothing we can do other than donate to humanitarian organizations.

But at least I can show you some pictures of a wonderful Ukrainian model I have worked with; Victoriia Alieko.

She dropped by the studio a couple of years ago for half a day to shoot some images, and here is a couple of them. 


I lit all these with y 57” Zeppelin’er, a deep silver umbrella without the front diffuser to get more punch to the light. 

You can tell by the multiple shadows as each strip in the umbrella reflects light at a slightly different angle, giving various light sources.

Deep umbrellas like this have the curious effect that it is both a large and hard lightsource since they will send light out at a direct angle almost throughout the surface of the umbrella. 

This also means it will have a reasonably hard falloff on the sides of the umbrella. If you put a diffuser on, you get an effect similar to a regular softbox.