Tangents

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Directional light from your on-camera flash

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Directional light from your on-camera bounce flash

Most often when photographers start using their flashguns out of the directly-forward position, they move the flash head to point 45’ or 90’ upward. The idea here is to bounce flash off the ceiling. Even though this is an improvement in most cases over using the flashgun pointing directly forward, this is also most often not ideal. We can improve on this. If we consider how studio lights are set up, we’ll rarely see a light source directly overhead of our subject. Top lighting just isn’t as flattering as light coming in from an  Read more inside...

Bounce flash photography: Problem-solving by improvising

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Bounce flash photography: Problem solving with improvised lighting

I received an email from Dr. Joel Studin in April '06, where he asked for help in setting up photographic lighting in his examination room at his offices. Dr. Studin is a renowned cosmetic surgeon based in Long Island, NY and he needs to do specific 'before' and 'after' photographs of his patients for his records. But there was a problem - despite guidelines from the plastic surgery society on standardizing photography, the results weren't consistent, and just didn't look good. Fortunately, I was able to help  Read more inside...