11 « March « 2012 « Carissa Snedeker Photography

I’ve been playing a lot with my flash. Adding one more tool to my photographic toolbox is exciting. Up until a couple of weeks ago I avoided flash photography like the plague. I’d rather have noise than deal with harsh lighting, unflattering shadows, and on and on.

I am learning that I don’t have to put up with any of those things as long as I know how to use my flash effectively.

Over the past week or so, I’ve been playing with fill flash to make as much as I can of existing light and using the flash to fill in the gaps. I’ve also been experimenting with second curtain sync.

First experiment: Shooting inside next to a sunny window. Now, this is really a photographer’s nightmare! Talk about a huge difference in exposures in one photograph.

Here are two shots of my bedroom window and adjacent wall. I shot one using no flash and set the exposure for the lighted window. The second is the same shot, same exposure with an on-shoe flash used for fill. The trick to doing this is to stop-down your flash; that is, you can adjust the Speedlite so that the output is less that full power. In this case, I believe I dropped the flash output by 2 full stops. I also had my flash set to fire at the end of the exposure (second curtain sync), instead of at the very beginning, giving my camera the opportunity to use the ambient lighting to light the photo first. Notice that the shadows cast from the blinds aren’t completely blown out. My thought that if a person were sitting there, they’d be nicely exposed, and yet, the photograph would look as though the individual was lit merely from the light of the window.

Without fill flash

With fill flash

So, I had to try this with a living subject. Sweetie doesn’t have the patience for this sort of thing, and the dogs can get a bit antsy, but the cats were in the living room, so I was in business.

First up, Jezebel. The sun comes through our south-facing window (at camera left). I bounced the flash from the ceiling and filled her in nicely, but in you can still see the glow of the window light on her and the specular reflection of the window in her eye.

Next up, Maya. I shot her sitting in front of the storm door with fill flash and without. In both photos Maya has nice rim light from the light coming through the door, but in the one with flash-fill, you can see all of her coloring. Of course, deciding to use fill or not is all up to you. Depending on what you want to do in the photograph will dictate your choices. In these next photographs, the flash was pointing right at the cats (no bouncing), but I had it stopped down to limit its intensity.