A few months ago, I went shopping for an old rug to use as a background. Hitting my neighborhood shops downtown, I got lucky at Armstrong’s on Main St, in the Las Vegas Arts District. The rug, somewhat stained and a little damaged was only $20. I didn’t even bother to unroll it when he told me the price.

The lamp, a thrift store score for $15, adds a nice vintage charm, and more importantly, an attractive picture for testing Marcos’ new AC slave. It’s a lightbulb shaped flash that screws into any normal socket. Great for bringing the life out of a lamp without the smeary orange blur dragging the shutter with a normal lightbulb in place.

The other lights are Nikon speedlights. One into a 32″ Eclipse umbrella, the other into a Strobies mini beauty dish to act as a rim light. The umbrella creates a uniquely soft specularity that I haven’t enjoyed with other umbrellas, so I mention it by name. The beauty dish is not something that works great at creating an even lighting pattern, but in this case the donut shaped light pattern will help to highlight the rug, and wherever it hits me, while providing a soft fill in the darker center portion of its lighting pattern.

I plan on using this setup with a model soon, but I was impressed enough with my fashion sense to want to immortalize the outfit.