I admit it, I’m a procrastinator.  I’ve had nine months to photograph my wife’s maternity portraits, but the cobbler’s family has gone barefoot again.  Until now.  I was NOT going to miss this.  No matter that she was in labor, we were gonna get this thing done! 

“Smile, hon!  No, less teeth.  Less grimacing.  Okay, just for fun, let’s try it without screaming this time.” 

With all the speed and grace of the Tazmanian Devil, I assembled a backdrop and put up some lights.  We took some safe shots first:  conservative crossed umbrellas, with a little back light.  Kinda nice.  Kinda boring.  I wanted to do something abstract that stripped out everything but the curves that a pregnant woman exhibits in her fullest glory.  Compositionally, I was aiming to emphasize line over form.  So, I used a one-light setup on a black background.  No fill.  I set the light high to just glance across the belly, and I flagged the light with a cardboard box top to keep light off the background paper (I didn’t have any cinefoil handy).  I also used a homemade grid/snoot to really restrict the light to her belly.  The snoot was rather hastily assembled, and may be reincarnated as snootzooka V2.0.  Any suggestions on how to improve it?