If you look closely at the beam pattern in Example 1, you’ll see something you would never notice while working with it. It is not one light source, it is two.

In Example 2, you can see the same pattern with increased contrast.

In the center, there is a tight, focused beam that behaves like a hard source. Around it, a softer, scattered halo that wraps and fills. That combination is what gives the beauty dish its unique look: crisp edges, deep shadow control, and smooth falloff all at once.

The bright core in the middle is formed by light that first strikes the central deflector disc and is then reflected cleanly from the parabolic surface toward the subject. These rays follow the shortest and most direct optical path, remaining largely specular and concentrated along the central axis. Because they have undergone only one major redirection, they behave like a small, hard source that creates crisp edges and strong definition.

The softer outer glow comes from light that takes longer and more complex paths, bouncing multiple times within the dish cavity or reflecting from the edges at steeper angles. Each additional interaction scatters the rays slightly, broadening the apparent size of the source and reducing contrast. This scattered component wraps around the subject, softening the shadow transitions and adding subtle fill.

Together, these two behaviors, the specular core and the diffuse halo, form the beauty dish’s signature character: contrast with forgiveness.

If it were possible to isolate just the center beam, it would behave like a small reflector or even a snoot. If you could isolate only the outer spill, it would behave like a large, diffuse source, as shown in Example 3. The beauty dish merges both behaviors into a single pattern.

_{(Note: There are two main types of beauty dish, silver and white, and a range of accessories such as grids and diffusion socks. In this post, I am referring specifically to a silver beauty dish without accessories.)}

How to Use It

The best way to position a beauty dish for portraits is just above the subject, angled down at roughly 45 degrees. I usually place it so the lower edge is barely out of frame. This gives me beautiful half-moon catchlights in the eyes, but the exact angle depends on where you want the shadows to fall.

Set the modeling light to 100%. This allows you to see exactly how the shadows fall as you adjust height and angle. You are composing for shadow placement at first, not for light coverage. The strong modeling light also contracts the model’s pupils, revealing more iris and giving the eyes more life in the final image.

The sweet spot, the optimal distance, sits roughly one dish diameter away from your subject (see Example 3). That is not a rule, just a reliable starting point. At that distance, the dish’s apparent size and the balance between specular and scattered rays are in harmony.

Closer, within the sweet spot, the larger apparent size of the dish produces a soft, broad glow. Farther, the dish’s apparent size shrinks, the hard core dominates, and the overall light becomes more contrasty.

Although rules are meant to be broken, avoid placing the dish so close that the face falls within the point of convergence, where the triangular beam narrows to its tip. Any distance beyond that point is usable, and within a window of about 5 to 10 centimeters, each small adjustment produces a distinct light quality.

Now that you have seen how the light behaves in the example images, keep them as reference. For many photographers, this is the missing puzzle piece that makes the beauty dish predictable. You will never be able to unsee that triangular beam again.

Bring in a model and make test shots. Compose for shadow shape at first, not brightness. Try different distances and power levels. Experiment with slightly underexposed, correctly exposed, and overexposed frames. Adjusting the highlights slider down in your photo editor will reduce diffuse light, making specular highlights more pronounced, and vice versa. I find my camera gives me better control over these nuances when I slightly underexpose.

A beauty dish is not a soft light, and it is not a hard light. It is both, two light behaviors in one, defined by geometry and physics, not magic.

• @photography.ericbenjam.in
• @alina.hnr

In a world saturated with superficial beauty, this piece rebels against the status quo. This isn’t about becoming, it’s about being. She’s not here for you. She’s here despite you.⁣⁣

This is a confrontation cloaked in elegance. The subject isn’t asking to be admired, she doesn’t invite the viewer in. She already owns them. With self-evident knowing, she challenges the passive role so often assigned to feminine beauty. She’s not decorated, not dressed to impress. Her eyes, lit by a strip of surgical light, do not seduce. They assess. They evaluate. They invoke.⁣⁣

Every element here serves a singular purpose: to declare. This is not beauty for consumption. It is not vulnerability dressed in rouge. It is strength in stillness. Power in being. Nothing more, nothing less.⁣⁣

Deal with it…⁣

• @photography.ericbenjam.in
• @francescashndr

Whenever you hear that phrase, chances are someone is trying to settle a matter. They’re trying to disqualify all critique and escape scrutiny by implying that beauty is subjective, a matter of taste. But is it really? In this essay, I want to break this phrase down and then revisit it from a different perspective.⁣⁣

What even is beauty?⁣⁣

Beauty has long been described as qualities that please the aesthetic senses. But in philosophy, beauty has long been understood as more than a sensory pleasure. Plato, in The Symposium and The Republic, linked beauty to the eternal Forms: the Good and the True. For him, beauty was not just about aesthetics but a pathway to perfection, a visible trace of what is highest and most true. Ugliness, on the other hand, was not simply unattractive but distorted, a deviation from the real, a visible untruth. And therefore, a lie.⁣⁣

In The Republic, Plato even warned that art which misrepresents or deceives (mimesis) is a kind of ugliness, because it obscures truth. To present distortion as reality is to lead the soul away from the Forms. Beauty, then, was not subjective taste but an ethical and metaphysical concern: a bridge between perception and truth.⁣⁣

While Plato framed beauty as a pathway to eternal truth, later thinkers and poets carried this idea forward in their own language. Centuries later, John Keats famously stated “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” This suggests a deep connection between the aesthetic experience and the nature of reality itself. The claim implies that beauty, in its purest form, can reveal profound truths about the world and ourselves. Keats presents this as a fundamental concept, stating it is “all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Not all thinkers agree, Kant, for example, separated aesthetic judgment from both logic and ethics. Still, the conviction that beauty discloses truth has endured, and it is this tradition I lean into here.⁣⁣

This raises the question of truth itself. Truth is often understood as correspondence with reality, though philosophers have offered other accounts, from coherence to pragmatic theories. For our purposes here, let’s stay with correspondence, because it anchors truth to something outside our opinions.⁣⁣

But philosophy alone does not settle the question. Our human perception complicates this ideal, urging us to reconsider how we actually experience beauty.⁣⁣

Now let’s start over.⁣⁣

Let’s indulge the broader more philosophical perspective for a moment and assume beauty is synonymous with truth. Truth is generally defined as correspondence with reality. And reality is the state of things as they actually exist, whether we recognize them or not. Which makes truth, at its core, objective, NOT subjective. This would imply that beauty is something that cannot be reduced to mere opinion.⁣⁣

Yet beauty is still observed, and observation is flawed. The human eye doesn’t simply see, it interprets. And interpretation is limited by experience. Sometimes we miss what is in front of us simply because we have not yet lived enough to see it.⁣⁣

So maybe “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” doesn’t mean beauty is whatever we choose to call it. Maybe it means that the ability to recognize beauty depends on what is in us. That in order to perceive beauty in the world, we must already hold some measure of it inside ourselves. That our ability to recognize beauty is proportional to the measure of truth we hold.⁣⁣

And if this is the case, then yes, beauty IS indeed in the eye of the beholder. But when someone drops that line with the intention of settling a matter, I often respond with the phrase: “then so too must be the absence thereof.” And if you’ve ever heard me say that, now you know what I mean.⁣⁣

Increase your measure⁣⁣

Creating anything is a powerful act. It is godlike to take a thought or an idea and manifest it into the world. As artists, we begin with limited experience. We start with only a small measure of beauty. At first we love everything we create, and we love it simply because it exists, because we could make it.⁣⁣

But over time, we look back and hate many of our creations. Not because they were worthless, but because our measure has grown. The more we create, the more experience refines us. Layer by layer, the onion is peeled back from our eyes, revealing new depth, new nuance, new meaning. We begin to see more than we once could.⁣⁣

And yet, when critiqued by someone else, we feel pain. We internalize disapproval and reject it. We defend ourselves with the familiar phrase: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” We say it in order to liberate ourselves from the pain. But I want to offer another perspective. As artists, our objective should be to increase the measure of beauty we hold. And to remember that anyone who critiques our work does so with the measure they hold.⁣⁣

Our measure of beauty grows through experience, reflection, and the willingness to see through another’s eyes. Each act of creation or encounter with critique adds to it, if we let it.⁣⁣

So the first response should be this: try to see through their eyes. Validate their assessment before you react. When you share your work, already brace for the sting. Slow down and let it pass before you react. Ask questions that will help you better understand their perception. Sometimes you will find they possess a smaller measure than you do. They cannot recognize your intent. This is your chance to share your measure of beauty with them, if they are able to receive it. Remember, it takes a measure of beauty to recognize it in another. And that goes for you too. Others may hold a measure you do not yet have. And the moment you allow yourself to see what they see, their measure becomes yours. And no one will ever be able to take that away.⁣⁣

So the next time you feel that sting of critique, ask yourself: “do I have the measure to see theirs, or do they have the measure to see mine?” These are not easy questions. It takes a measure of beauty to ask them, and a measure to answer them. It takes time, humility, restraint, reflection, introspection, and extrospection. When tied together, these become virtue, a beauty in and of itself. This is why I believe the very act of being conscious of this, and intentional about this, will automatically increase your measure.⁣⁣

I would like this phrase not to be used to shut the door, but to open one. Not as armor against critique or a curtain hiding our growth, but as a challenge: to expand our measure, to seek what others see, and to share what we see with them. Each act of creation, each moment of reflection, is a chance to increase your measure of beauty, by striving to understand not only the world as it is, but also the eyes that gaze upon it. Progress, humility, and connection are themselves acts of beauty. And in reaching for a greater measure, you may discover that beauty lies not only in your eye, but in your openness, your willingness to see anew. That, in the end, is all any of us can truly hold, and all we need to know.⁣⁣

• @photography.ericbenjam.in
• @pauli_julie

⁣Almost every model starts in the same place: total reliance on the photographer’s cues.⁣⁣

Where do I put my hands?

Should I look at the camera?

What do I do with my face?

That’s normal. That’s where everyone begins. Over time, most models build their first “defaults.” The three or four poses they can slip into without thinking. Chin up, dreamy eyes, parted lips. The “pretty girl face.”⁣⁣

Those defaults are not wrong. They’re the first layer of a script. Every professional model needs a set of recallable moves, the same way a dancer knows steps or an actor knows lines. But here’s the problem: that’s not modeling. That’s Instagram influencer at best. That’s the look that attracts hobbyists. And if that’s all you’ve got in your toolkit, you’re not reaching for the stars. Those scripts are supposed to be a foundation, not a cage. They need to be cultivated like a garden, not repeated like a broken record.⁣⁣

Real modeling is about:⁣⁣

Shapes: the body as sculpture.⁣

Tension: holding energy inside the frame.⁣

Lines: using arms, spine, and angles as design.⁣

Mystery: what you hide is as powerful as what you show.⁣

Character: the courage to be deeply yourself, and the skill to become someone else.⁣⁣

The industry doesn’t need another girl who knows how to look vacant and “ethereal.” It needs someone who can turn her body into sculpture, someone who can conceal as powerfully as she reveals. Someone who can snap from raw intensity to resting bitch face in the space of a shutter click.⁣⁣

It’s easy to get stuck in the first default script that impresses others and makes you feel confident. But I’m here to disrupt that confidence. I want you to rebuild it. I want to put you back in that place you were when you built that first script and encourage you to expand it. It’s going to make you feel insecure at first. But you got this far, and you will level up.⁣⁣ Many models never reach that point where they build a script at all. You’ve managed to push into it, and you will manage to push beyond it.

Here’s the truth: glamour pop drama on autopilot might impress your friends. But if you think it’s going to impress an agency, a casting director, or a magazine editor, you’re already losing. The camera sees through habits. It doesn’t reward autopilot. It rewards presence. You being fully alive in your body, every inch of it.⁣⁣

So if you’re serious about modeling as a career, stop recycling the same three moves. Every time you do, you’re not in control, your habits are. Throw them out. Ban yourself from using them. Then see what’s left. Safe gets you nowhere in this business. And that goes for both of us. We work hard to build something that feels like our own. But if we don’t kick it and build it higher, we won’t last. Anyone can use a camera. And with practice, anyone can light a subject. And there’s always someone prettier, and with practice anyone can pose. We have to throw everything away and start over. Over and over again. Make ourselves unpredictable, and unforgettable. And when we manage to develop a recognizable consistency within that storm, now that’s the raw material of iconic. ⁣⁣

Practice like an athlete.⁣⁣

Pick a Vogue Paris spread. Copy every single pose in the mirror. Yes, even the ugly ones. Especially the ugly ones. If it feels sexy, chances are it looks cliché. If it feels unnatural and awkward, you’re in the arena of iconic. Learn where your hands belong, and more importantly, where they don’t. A hand with stiff fingers on your own body will never read as natural.⁣⁣

Stop chasing “pretty.” Pretty isn’t art. Pretty isn’t fashion. Pretty is safe. And safe is boring. Study the models who broke the industry: Kate Moss, Kristen McMenamy, Naomi Campbell, Saskia de Brauw. None of them survived by being merely beautiful. They survived by being singular.⁣⁣

When you step in front of my lens, don’t give me “pretty.” Give me form. Give me shapes. Give me concealment. Give me defiance. Take control. Show me that you’re more than habits. Show me that you can create something only you can make.⁣⁣

Because modeling isn’t about looking good.

It’s about making us look twice.⁣⁣

• @photography.ericbenjam.in
• @francescashndr

Steven Kotler calls flow a peak state: a mode of consciousness where the sense of self fades, time distorts, and creativity surges. He’s not wrong. But like most mainstream interpretations, his version of flow is built on an assumption, that all brains are wired the same. That flow is something people enter, then exit.
For some of us, it’s something we live in.

For me, flow wasn’t a temporary high. It was my default mode. It was safety. It was home. And I miss it more than I’m comfortable admitting.

This isn’t the typical flow state you hear about in self-help videos. I’m neurodivergent, and for people like me, what Kotler calls “flow” can be something far deeper, and more dangerous.

How It Started

I found this state as a child, not through mindfulness or peak performance, but through trauma.

I grew up in an emotionally distant home. I was bullied in school. Social interaction was unpredictable, often cruel, and never within my control. But inside a task, inside a project, I had control. Not over others, but over focus. Over time. Over my own perception.

I taught myself to code long before I understood what coding was. I reverse-engineered dumb musical instruments and made them speak MIDI. I designed LED shoes that lit up when you walked, years before they hit stores. I built hand fans like the ones you now see at football stadiums.

But it wasn’t just machines.

People often assume I’m mechanical because of how I think. They assume I only build systems. What they miss is that I also composed classical music. One of those pieces, November Morning, began as an electronic track by Martin Stimming. I made a classical interpretation that was later performed by a full orchestra, the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester in Frankfurt an der Oder, without a single sampler involved. It became a human, breathing thing. That piece was reviewed by groove magazine, not as a novelty crossover, but as a legitimate orchestral work, emotionally rich and fully realized. And yet, to me, composing it came from the same place as building circuits: flow.

I’ve been called a genius more than once. But that’s not true. I’m not a genius. I’m not even particularly smart. I just disappear into systems in a way that most people can’t. I’ve met actual geniuses, and I can’t relate to them at all. I don’t improvise brilliance. I don’t dazzle in conversation. I suck at math. My strength is not intelligence, it’s depth. I go in and I don’t come out until the thing is finished or I fall apart.

I also draw hyperrealistically in charcoal, using dust and friction instead of algorithms. And I work in photography, not the kind that documents, but the kind that searches for something beneath the surface of light and expression.

The state I lived in, this deep, silent tunnel of attention, wasn’t a denial of creativity. It was the place I accessed it. It was my method for finding not just structure, but meaning.

The Machine That Couldn’t Be Owned

When I reached adulthood, this state followed me into work. It didn’t always serve me well.

I was often poached by company owners who wanted to use me. They were drawn to what I could do, but frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t read me, manage me, or control me. I didn’t play social games. I didn’t attend to hierarchy. I didn’t signal deference. I just worked, relentlessly, quietly, and often invisibly. That intimidated people.

The friction wasn’t just external. In these states, I didn’t have access to my emotional value system. I couldn’t regulate. I was reactive when interrupted. I spoke without filters. I offended people. I caused harm.

And afterward, I’d have to apologize, sometimes without even understanding what I had done. Because in those moments, I wasn’t really there. The prefrontal cortex, the seat of morality, time awareness, self-monitoring, was offline. That’s what transient hypofrontality is. But when that state stretches over weeks, or months, or years, it shapes your character in ways you can’t fully see until you emerge.

The Body Forgotten

From the outside, I must have looked like a zombie.

People saw output, but they didn’t see what it cost. In deeper states, my physical needs simply vanished. I would sit on my leg until it went numb, and stay there, unmoved, unaware, untouched by pain. I’d forget to eat. Forget to drink. I’d go without water until I was sick. Not out of neglect, but because the project had already resumed by the time I woke up. My body wasn’t part of the loop.

Hygiene declined. Sleep dissolved. The project continued on its own while the rest of me dissolved into it.

And relationships? They deteriorated too. I’ve always found it hard to maintain social connections, even outside flow. But inside it, I became oblivious to the warning signs. The silences that grew. The emotional tensions I didn’t notice until they exploded. I didn’t withdraw to be unkind. I just didn’t register that others existed in that space. Not as living, feeling people with limits. Only as background noise to be navigated or tuned out.

That state made me functionally blind to the very systems that keep a person alive: body, community, reflection.

When I Became Human Again

The turning point was fatherhood.

Becoming a single parent to my son, who is also neurodivergent, shattered the conditions that allowed me to live in flow. He needed me, present, responsive, emotionally attuned. He interrupted. Constantly. And slowly, painfully, the systems I had shut down began to come back online.

We share a brain culture, though our expressions of it differ. I’ve come to see that what I once thought was just “how I work” was actually a neurodivergent survival strategy, one that mimicked genius and hid distress in plain sight.

I began to feel time again. I became aware of my values. I heard my internal voice, not the calm analytical one, but the vulnerable, contradictory one I had buried long ago.

I became human again. But not without grief.

The machine-state, for all its dysfunctions, had given me consistency. Peace. Focus. It had insulated me from overwhelm by narrowing my world to a single point of control. Losing that left me raw. Exposed. And I still long for it, more than I should.

A Note to Steven Kotler

Stephen, if you ever read this: your work helped me name something I lived in for decades. But I need to say this as clearly as possible, flow doesn’t land the same for all of us.

For some, it’s not a hack. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s not an optimization. It’s dissociation with a productivity wrapper. You describe transient hypofrontality as a peak. But what if it’s actually a refuge for some? What if some of us didn’t learn to enter that state, but rather, we learned to live there because we couldn’t survive anywhere else?

And when we finally leave it, not because we chose to, but because life demanded it, we don’t feel liberated. We feel bereft.

That’s the cost of building a self inside a system that never asked for one.

I still feel that state. Every day. It’s always there, just beneath the surface. I don’t need any special ritual to access it. I don’t have to chase it or induce it. All I have to do is stop resisting, even slightly, and it takes over. It’s still my nervous system’s default. The only difference now is that I manage it, consciously, at the level of thought, because I finally understand the price of letting it run my life.

• @photography.ericbenjam.in

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But it’s more than just words. Frozen in time is a whole universe, encapsulated within the subject. Their vision of themselves. Their ambitions, dreams, hopes and fears. Whatever moves them, whatever they want to see reflected when they look at the final photo. Even how much sleep they got, or how hydrated they are.

But it’s also a snapshot of my relationship with them. Everything we exchanged before the shutter clicked – verbal, nonverbal, emotional. There’s a quiet choreography in the shared intent: my desire to create something they’ll love, their desire to give me something worthy to capture.

It’s a mutually vulnerable space. A resonance chamber. I feel every nuance of their emotional flow as if it were my own. That empathy shapes my work. As I internalize and regulate what I feel from them, they begin to co-regulate. That emotional loop becomes part of the creative current that leads to the final image.

Whatever happens in that space is real. It’s truth. Our shared truth in that moment.

A picture isn’t a thousand words. It’s a thousand parallel universes, frozen in time. And no one else who sees the image will ever access them the way we can. But they’ll sense it. They’ll feel the hum beneath the surface. Like the fading impression of a dream.

• @photography.ericbenjam.in
• @mandla_mandy