Yep, now's the time to get cheap Christmas baubles, and the cheap metallic balls, especially the reflective ones that are almost like polished metal, and use thm to make light-probe images. Go look at the Poser images, in Runtime/textures/Poser 8 Textures/LightProbes, and look at the middle of duskByOcean.jpg or jungleShadeBrightDay.jpg . Yep, that's the photographer in the middle of the image. And you don't even have to mount your mirror ball on a stick. Practically, you want to use the longest focal length you can with your digital camera. And since these images with Poser are around 700 pixels square, we can get away with only having the sphere being a small part of the camera image--we're only using half a megapixel. So, of you go, grab your balls, and have fun... :}