![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/flash\/Erin-1627-900.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With this recent wedding – the same one as posted here<\/a>– the ceremony was moved indoors because of the approaching thunderstorms.\u00a0 The ceremony was going to be held in the large reception room in the late afternoon, under the chuppah.\u00a0\u00a0 I once again had no choice but to add flash to balance the shaded side to areas lit by window light.<\/p>\n I want to post this image as an example again of how I use directional light from my on-camera flash.\u00a0 Instead of using a generic light modifier on top of my speedlight, I used The Black Foamie Thing<\/a>.\u00a0 I was using\u00a0the 70-200 mm f2.8 to capture\u00a0the bride’s expressions as she exchanged rings with the groom. Now, from my point of view where I was standing, I had more than a 180′ range in how I could rotate my flash-head to bounce flash to light up my subject.\u00a0 I also had about a 120 degree angle in how I could swivel & tilt my flashhead from right behind me, over & above me, and even\u00a0tilting the flash-head forward here.\u00a0 So I really had a wide range in how I could bounce my flash.<\/p>\n But for me, only one direction really made sense …<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I most often approach bounce flash photography as if I were in a studio and had to place the softbox to light my subject.<\/p>\n Which, with multiple bounceable surfaces like I had here with this indoors ceremony, meant that it just didn’t make sense to bounce my flash above me or even tilted forward.\u00a0 I can’t off-hand think of any situation in a studio where I’d have a single softbox directly above my subject for a portrait.\u00a0 It just doesn’t make much visual sense.\u00a0 (However, if you can somehow make it work like that in a studio\u00a0… great!\u00a0 Knock yourself out!)<\/p>\n If I bounced flash behind me,\u00a0 or even behind me and to either side of me, then the light would be very flat.\u00a0 And I would light the back of the groom’s head better than any other part of the scene.\u00a0 And again, that just doesn’t make visual sense.<\/p>\n How I actually ended up bouncing my flash – and this is a near-instant decision – was to point my flash-head to the\u00a0 2 o’clock position, and tilted about 45′ or 60′ up.\u00a0\u00a0In other words, my flash was\u00a0pointed\u00a0to my right and\u00a0forward from the camera’s point of view.\u00a0 And tilted upwards by 45-60′.\u00a0\u00a0 Not\u00a0 90′ to my right, but instead, 30′ forward from that 90′ position.<\/p>\n The reason why I chose this angle, is that I wanted light to come from the side of the bride.\u00a0 That way I get that directional quality to my light.\u00a0 And this\u00a0gives\u00a0form and dimension to my subject.<\/p>\n I didn’t bounce to my left (10 o’clock position), since the chuppah’s structure was in the way.\u00a0 But mostly because there was a room divider to my right.\u00a0 A very easy surface to bounce flash off.<\/p>\n From this point on, it is just a matter of choosing my shutter speed, aperture and ISO so that: Settings:\u00a0 1\/250th @ f3.2 @ 1600 ISO<\/p>\n My flash was set to TTL, so that I could shoot fast, and not have to be concerned right there with getting the correct manual setting on my flash.\u00a0\u00a0 I am quite happy with allowing TTL flash technology to make my life easier under pressure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" directional bounce flash With this recent wedding – the same one as posted here– the ceremony was moved indoors because of the approaching thunderstorms.\u00a0 The ceremony was going to be held in the large reception room in the late afternoon, under the chuppah.\u00a0\u00a0 I once again had no choice but to add flash to balance Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,42],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-flash-photography","8":"category-technique","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1490"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1490"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28685,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1490\/revisions\/28685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1490"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– my available light registers to some degree,
\n– I have minimal depth-of-field,
\n– and at least a\u00a0hand-holdable shutter speed with a stabilized \/ vibration reducing lens.<\/p>\n