Thanks, Eric, Marv, Doug, John (R), and Tony.
You're probably right, Eric. But, like most of us, I already have more cameras than I really need. On the other hand, I made the shot with the D3, which just came back from Nikon repair. I should have used the D800 and set the aspect ratio at 4 x 5. It'd still be a crop, but I wouldn't have to call it a crop.
As most of you guys know, this isn't the kind of thing I usually do. My real passion is street photography, but for one reason or another, this winter I haven't been able to get to a place or a situation where that kind of thing is possible. So I'm trying new things. Actually more revived than new, since I used to do this kind of thing a lot back in the sixties.
Marv, if distance is the problem, cropping ought to be able to demonstrate what you mean. Show me what you'd crop out of the scene by moving closer. I'm always interested in new ideas.
Doug. Several problems with moving the whole rig away from the wall: (1) To do that I'd have had to rearrange the whole end of the living room. There's a heavy couch directly in front of the camera and I'm shooting over it. (2) Just outside the frame are things like windows, curtains, wall switches, etc., that couldn't reasonably be taken out in post-processing. (3) I wanted the light's wash on the wall. I made some shots with the light off, but I wasn't happy with them.
It looks as if most of the light in this picture is coming from the lamp, but, in fact, there's a CTO-gelled SB 910 in a large softbox, high and at the edge of the frame, camera left, a CTO-gelled SB 700 lower and in a smaller softbox, camera right, and a CTO-gelled SB 600 on the floor in the corner, pointing up. All the speedlights were dialed way down to keep from throwing shadows or spoiling the cone of light from the lamp.
John, You may be right about the top. I'll whack it down to square format and see. Unfortunately, there's a too much detail lower down that would be a problem: baseboards, lamp cord with foot switch, etc. That stuff is in the original with its 2 x 3 aspect ratio, but I cropped it out. On the other hand, the table's legs are beautifully twisty, so maybe one of these days I can get the thing into a less cluttered corner and balance it better.