Cheap tricks.

These 2 shots are done with the same setup. To the left of my face is a pc monitor with a light grey screen as the background. You can try playing with different coloured screens to get different effects. Obviously the brighter the screen colour, the more light it's going to fire out so for photo's with harsher light use a white screen. The closer you move your head to the light, the more intense the effect is so if you're shutter speed is too low, it might burn out. Also try to keep enough distance as you'll not want to get the monitor in the shot either ! I went with 1/50th second shutter speed as I was sitting still and you'll have to as well otherwise you're going to get blurred images. ISO 400 ( and ISO 800 ) to let more and less light as needed. Camera was tripod mounted and shots were both taken using a shutter release cable. As for editing, nothing too complicated. Just opened up in Adobe Photoshop CS3, cropped, sharpened, sharpened edges and increases curves at the higher end until I found the levels I liked before finally adding borders and saving.