Instagram might be all the rage for giving your pictures that washed-out, vintage look, but a pioneering photographer has gone one better, manipulating light and shade to create the effect of a Baroque-era masterpiece.

Bill Gekas from Melbourne, Australia, wanted to create eye-catching images that mimic the paintings of the Dutch, Flemish and Italian 17th-century masters - such as Rembrandt, Rubens and Caravaggio.

Mr Gekas, who uses his five-year-old daughter Athena as model, painstakingly creates settings that evoke the correct time period and uses strobe lights to mimic the effect of soft, natural lighting.

Mr Gekas, a self-taught photographer, has spent years mastering the process, through hard work and experimentation. He began learning the techniques on 35mm film cameras but has since switched to digital.

He has now won numerous awards and his work has featured on the covers of several leading photographic magazines.

More of Mr Gekas work can be found at his website, and he also gives a fascinating account of how he created some of his most eye catching images on his blog here .