David Fincher is one of my all-time favourite directors. His low-key, contrasted, top-lit visual style has had a huge influence on my own filmmaking and photography, and when the time came to do headshots for our new website, we wanted to create something in that vein - something mysterious and cinematic.
This shot of Lukas, my business partner, was lit with an open-face strobe, acting as our key light, firing into a large reflector just slightly off-camera to create that soft, contrasted falloff. To separate him from the background, we placed another strobe with a 7" Reflector behind him and to the right, acting as a backlight.
I asked him to turn his head slightly away from the key, in order to avoid any direct light on his eyes - this seems counterintuitive when taking headshots, as it's all about lighting the eyes, I know, but I just love the sense of mystery it lends to the image.
Finally, the image was brought into Photoshop for some skin cleaning, retouching, (hours of) dodging and burning, some sharpening, and color grading.