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flash photography techniques
natural looking flash ~ flash & ambient light ~ dragging the shutter
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Here I want to illustrate a particular point for those who disdain flash and prefer ambient light only – even if flash would’ve helped.
With a bit of thought, and understanding of some essential techniques, using flash need not look unnatural, nor spoil the ambient light.
By metering for the ambient light .. ie. making sure my ambient exposure is correct, I could use flash to lift the shadow areas and make it a better image than it would’ve been without flash.
Have a look at the following photo :
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I bounced flash off the church wall. The church was large, and the ceiling high .. but by shooting in a vertical position, I could bounce my flash straight towards the church interior wall to my left.
This spilled enough light onto the couple to improve the image, and make my post-production time much less. (Starting with an image that is very close to the ideal exposure and WB will really speed up your workflow) The settings were: I purposely did NOT use an omnibounce / Stofen attachment, since I didn’t want flash to spill forward for the series of images I took here. I did NOT set my flash to 45` since this would not have been a correct angle to bounce at. |
As the parents walked down the aisle, I had time to make a comparison shot without flash.
(I did this specifically for presentation here).
So here are two shots in succession. The one with flash, and the one purely ambient light. The shot with flash had the WB slightly adjusted, the other is directly out of camera. Exposure settings remained the same, and I didn’t touch up exposure in raw either.
Note that the flash shot has NO flash shadow. It looks natural, and a hell of a lot better than the ambient-only shot. By using flash, *I* controlled the light, and didn’t merely shrug my shoulders and complain that the ambient light wasn’t ideal.

To improve exposure for the ambient-only shot, I could’ve set a slower shutter speed, and risked blur as they move and from camera shake. Or I could’ve bumped up my iso to get the higher shutter speed, but then have to deal with increased grain. Also, the ambient light isn’t even. With flash I had much more control over how the final image looks.
And with this I am also daring the ambient-only purists to tell me that the image with flash doesn’t look a lot better than the ambient shot.
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How to better match available light and flash …
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If you need more direct help or instruction on flash photography, I do present workshops and seminars, and I also offer individual tutoring sessions.
If you feel that you have benefited from these webpages, then ordering equipment and other goodies through the sponsors and affiliates, would be a welcome way of helping towards the cost of hosting these webpages. Thanks!
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How do I slay the “green beast”? Maybe I missed it in your book or on this site. I know you have talked about florescent lighting but I’m not getting good results. I’m using a D200 with SB-900. I’ve set WB to florescent and also to “A”. I’ve added various shades of green gel and I still end up with a mild to strong blue tint. Other than going to my Quantum T2 to overpower the florescent lights is there something else I need to do?
Comment by Dwayne Zimmerman — December 14, 2009 @ 11:35 pm
Comment by Neil — December 16, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
Dear Sir
need your advice, if we use tungsten lamp(s) surrounding model, and would like to fill light with flash, do we have problem on different color temperature ? should we fix it and how to fix.
rgds, suwat u.
Comment by Suwat Upathambhakul — February 19, 2010 @ 9:57 pm
Comment by Neil vN — February 19, 2010 @ 10:47 pm
Your work is totally amazing, and with so much info to fellow photographer new and professional it’s worth every second that i took to read the blogs and view the amazing images.
Comment by Adrian Walker — July 20, 2010 @ 11:11 pm
Hey Neil,
I have been reading your blog posts all night. I also just ordered your book and it should be here monday! [2 day shipping, yes, it is that important ;)]
I just got a 430ex II and I have a couple of questions for you, if you don’t mind. Ideally, (I know it would vary from situation to situation, but) if you underexpose the ambient light by about 1 stop, would you then bump up the flash exposure to +1 to compensate? Especially if you are shooting ETTL and bouncing off walls/ceilings… I feel like this would be the case, right?
Also, I couldnt find a post regarding fill flash when outdoors when there is nothing to bounce the light off. If fill flash is necessary, do you typically aim the flash directly at the subject and lower the flash exposure significantly? Do you ever use a diffuser when using your flash for fill light outdoors?
Thank you so much,
Alex Girolamo
Comment by Alex Girolamo — August 27, 2010 @ 12:33 am
Comment by Neil vN — August 30, 2010 @ 2:31 pm