More Flash

Let’s start with your flash on your camera. Bright but harsh contrasty light might make for a great newspaper shot at a fight in a bar but it’s not what you’d want to use for a wedding or any indoor special event.

The easiest way to modify the light is to bounce it. Most flash units will rotate and tilt the flash head. Using this feature you can bounce the light from your flash straight up and let it hit the ceiling and reflect down. (Check that the ceiling is white as any other colour will change the light that is reflected. Found this out shooting a special event in a restaurant with a blue ceiling!).

The resulting light will fall like gentle rain on your subjects making for a much more even lit scene. Because the light is now travelling a longer distance you’re going to have to open your aperture one or two stops to compensate.

You can bounce light off of any surface including walls or even a white shirt of a grooms man standing beside you LOL. Be careful though as these special circumstances can result in some weird lighting effects.

But for even better results you can use an off camera flash and for even better results it can be mounted in a softbox (as in the photo above) or a photographic umbrella. Placed close to your subject these modifiers make for near studio-like results without all the costly studio equipment.

At many special events I would setup a softbox (sometimes two with a third flash behind my subjects lighting a portable backdrop) and shoot with remote controls and end up with super quick family and couple portraits. The backdrop was hung on a portable frame and one of my subjects sat on a stool.

For this type of work buy the largest capacity flash with remote control that’s made for your camera. You can also buy setups made by photographic equipment companies. Overall the cost can be quite economical and results absolutely spectacular.

If you’re shooting professionally there are professional portable setups but these can get very expensive very quickly but will last for decades of hard use.