CameraCrazy

Light is the basis of good photos, controlling it will definitely improve your pictures.

Flash photography is a fairly new aspect of photography for me. For the longest time I have been using my built in flash and the extent of my knowledge was subjected using a flash as a filler to minimize or eliminate harsh shadows. Recently, I was lucky enough to pick up a Speedlight and after a few days of playing with it an entirely new world of photography was opened up to me. Immediately I saw reductions in red eye, better range of illumination and the most fun of all directing the flash elsewhere than at the subject of interest. By no means do I consider myself and expert in flash photography, I have several years to go before I can even consider using the terms, but I did want to share with you my favorite new way of illuminating a subject. By using a bounce flash.

The bounce flash is pretty much as the name suggests where you direct the head of the flash in another direction and bounce the light off of something and then onto your subject. So why is this good? Well first off if your shooting a person or animal, you can eliminate red eye. The light falling upon your subject is coming at an angle that’s not along the same plane as your lens, thus the light doesn’t reflect off of the blood vessels in the eye. However, the truly great thing about the bounce flash is that it creates a much softer light that is evenly spread over your subject. This eliminates harsh shadows created with direct light and often creates more flattering pictures of people and animals through enhancing subtle tones.

There are a couple of tips to help improve bouncing a flash: firstly, keep in mind that because you’re bouncing the light off of a surface (like a ceiling or wall) the light has to travel further, this typically means that there will be less light hitting your subject. After all light that is bounced will partially be scattered away from your subject and partially be absorbed by the ceiling, wall or whatever your bouncing off of (with the exception of a mirror). With less light hitting your subject you can run the risk of underexposing, so keep in mind you may have to increase the power your flash emits. Increasing the flashes power can typically be done either manually or using the flash exposure compensation (available on SLR’s).

The position of the subject relative to your flash will help determine the angle to use when bouncing light. For subjects close to the camera (up to about 5 ft), the bounce to properly and evenly illuminate a subject is to aim the head of the flash straight up (90° from the plane created between the camera and subject). The further back a subject the more you should decrease the angle. For subjects 5 to 10 ft I found bouncing the light at angles between 75° to 60°, respectively. For subjects up to 20 ft then your looking for an angle of around 45°. Keep in mind these are suggestions and there is nothing stopping you from bouncing light to the side or behind a subject to achieve the effect you want (take a look at the bounced sidelight photograph).

Another cool effect of bouncing a flash is that you can enhance the warmth or colour of light falling on your subject (alternatively you can also cool a subject). If you bounce light off of a white surface then for the most part the light will hit your subject with the same properties of light that left the flash (white reflects all wavelengths of light), but if you use a colored ceiling, wall or other reflector the light reflected back on to the subject will have aspects more related to the properties of the reflector (for example, a red ceiling will reflect a lot of red wave lengths). Compare the photographs of my faithful and obedient model, the sidelight picture is the most accurate colour representation of my dog’s fur. The photograph at the beginning of this post was light bounced off of a warm toned ceiling, leading to the more warm look.

In playing around with the bounce flash eventually I ran into ideas on using attachments for altering how much light you bounce and how much light you send forward. These items often are made out of cheap plastic and costs start around $50. There is a website called: ABetterBounceCard.com which shows you how to make a bounce card to attach to your flash. In making my better bounce card ended up drawing the outline. I’ve included this file for download here for those who are interested. If I correctly converted the document, after cutting out along the lines the trapezoid should be about 5.5 inches high. I do suggest watching the video for the instructions on what items to use to make the card and how to use it. If you don’t have a flash and are strongly thinking about portrait photography or tweaking light, I strongly suggest picking one up and giving it a shot.