I found a new blog that I’m enjoying. Jenny is doing a 365 project where she takes a picture a day and posts it. As I was exploring her work, I noticed that she makes notes after each photo about the stats of the camera. I also noticed that she owns a Speedlite 430EX just like me. She uses it for a number of her photographs and it turns out – they look good! I guess flash isn’t evil if you know how to use it.
This made me conduct an experiment a few minutes ago. Here is a picture of my dog with no flash at all.
Doesn’t exactly capture any features, eh? Now, here is one with my Speedlite set at a 45 degree angle.
You can see her now, right? It doesn’t kill the mood or give too harsh of a light. You can even still see the shadow in front of her from the patio door with the natural light coming in behind her. Just enough light added to the scene.
For the last shot, I removed the Speedlite and used the on-camera pop-up flash.
(Naturally, a kid entered the kitchen and the dog popped up from her position – but you still get the idea.) See how the on-camera pop-up flash gave a little too much light to her?
In the event you don’t have a Speedlite and don’t know what I’m talking about by setting it at 45 degree angle, I removed it and set it on it’s stand to show you.
It looks like I have something else to practice and get good at. Thanks for following along!
