"Hey, Cory! Why is your flash sideways?" AKA, The Bounce Flash Article!

I am finally getting started on my series of articles on flash. I am going to start with the type of flash I use most often - the on-camera bounce.

The reasons I use on-camera bounce:

1. I move quickly and quite often have the two options of available light or on-camera flash. Sometimes the available light in a room is not flattering.
   
2. I don't like direct on-camera flash in MOST situations as it produces very flat lighting with harsh shadows
3. Soft, bounced lighting, when balanced with room lighting, looks natural and flattering.

The reasons NOT to use bounce flash

1. Some rooms don't lend themselves well to bounce flash (ballrooms a mile wide with 40 foot ceilings, black paint on the walls, red paint on the walls if you are shootingJPG, etc.)
2. It does not add any drama to the photographs (harsh lighting is dramatic and can add or detract from a photograph, soft lighting usually does neither).
3. Beautiful natural lighting already exists in the environment you are in.

Equipment that you will need.

1. A digital (or film, I suppose) SLR
2. Flash capable of tilt and swivel.
3. A piece of black plastic and some Velcro.
   
4. Good batteries

Okay, here we go with the meat of the article.

Bounce flash is a quick and easy way to upgrade the lighting in a room. Whenever I am looking through my camera I am looking at the type and angle of light as well as content and composition. When I see that the lighting is mostly from overhead sources, I usually want to modify it somehow. Overhead lighting as the only source of light leaves dark shadows in the eyes and causes people to look tired. This is probably my least favorite type of lighting.

To use bounce flash, you don't have to do anything too difficult. You attach your flash to your camera (or to an off-camera shoe cord if you wanna get funky) and point the flash in the direction that you want the light to come from. Imagine that you have a big softbox on a set of wheels that you can position anywhere you want in the half-circle behind you. You can place directly to the left or right, directly overhead, directly behind you or the the left or right of directly behind. You obviously can't make it come from the far side of your subject because of the physics involved (think of shooting a cue ball in pool - you can't bounce the ball off the bumper directly on the far side of another ball without hitting the ball).

The softbox concept

A portrait on the fly using bounce flash

Now that you have your flash bouncing around the room, you need to control it a bit. The first thing to keep in mind is how you want the lighting to appear. Do you want to drown out the existing lighting, add to the existing lighting or somewhere in between? My favorite way to do it is to add to, but not completely overpower the existing lighting. I do this by manually setting the exposure to keep the room lighting the way I want it (to add to, but not completely overpower, I might set the exposure to underexpose the existing light by one to two stops). Also, the slower your shutter speed, the more you have to have the room lighting below the flash setting. To give you an example, if you are shooting at 1/20 of a second with only a one-stop difference between room light and flash, you will have blur from the movement of the people as recorded by the by room lighting after the flash has fired. In which case, you need to increase the difference to two stops to avoid the flash-blur look. Unless, of course, that is what you are going for!

Bounce from the right of the room balanced to the room light.

Something else that I wold recommend is controlling the light from falling directly into the frame (this is a more common problem when shooting wide). To do this, you either need to zoom your flash or create some sort of snoot-type device for your flash. You can see what I did here with a piece of black plastic (a file folder from Staples) and some Velcro. This prevents flash from hitting someone directly into the scene I am shooting. I've shown it to other people, but most don't share my enthusiasm for attaching ugly, home-made devices to their flashes, but willingly spend $40 on a piece of Tupperware to sit on top of it!

My setup with black plastic "bounce tunnel"!

I have four more hints with bounce flash. The first is to use a high ISO because this increases the sensitivity of the sensor, which in turn reduces how hard your flash has to work and reduces how badly you blind anyone that makes the mistake of standing next to you! Second, buy a good pair ofNiMH batteries. NiMH batteries keep a consistent recharge rate during the life of the batteries. With Alkaline batteries, the recycle times on your flash become longer and longer as the power is drained out of them. Third, be aware of your surroundings. It doesn't do any good to want the light to come from the left if the nearest wall is 120 feet away. It also doesn't do any good to point a flash directly at the mother of the bride's face! No matter how annoying you may find her, nothing good will come of blinding her! That last is just a joke; I haven't had an annoying MOB in years.

Another example of side bounce.

Finally, experimentation is good! In fact, it is the only way to get a good handle on using bounce flash. Go forth and bounce!

The workflow

I sometimes get asked what my workflow is like. So, here is a quick sketch!

1) Shoot the wedding in RAW
2) Download the cards using Downloader Pro by Breezebrowser and a Sandisk Extreme USB 2.0 Card reader to an external drive
3) Renumber images using Breezebrowser
4) Burn 2 copy discs of RAW images to DVD using Nero
5) Import into LightRoom
6) My wife picks images from 3000 to 700 using LR flag feature
7) Process picked images using LR
8) Export JPG's
9) Check the JPG's using Breezebrowser fix anything that needs to be fixed in Photoshop
10) Renumber the JPG's using Breezebrowser
11) Burn three copies of the final JPG's - one for client, two for my files
12) Jettison the RAW images (still have the backups)
13) Run RedCart script in Photoshop
14) Upload Cart
15) Choose favorite images for Slideshow
16) Size images for proofing section of website using Breezebrowser
17) Upload slideshow images to website
18) Size all images for proofing and add border with Breezebrowser
19) FTP proof images to ProDPI\
20) Select best of best for blog, size & post

Direction and Quality of Light

I was going to start writing my articles on flash today, but I thought that as a prologue, I would first talk about the quality and direction of light.

Light, in my mind, has two characteristics. Direction and Quality. Light can surround you almost perfectly even from every direction, or it can stream harshly from one direction. It can be soft or it can be harsh. It can have these traits whether you are using natural light or creating the light with flash (this is why this article came first).

Light can be soft, harsh, directional or enveloping. I've grabbed some examples from my latest wedding to illustrate and show you how I use the different light qualities.

Natural, soft window light streaming in the door. I chose to backlight the dress so that the light would shine through it.

This was taken with available light in the room. This was less of a conscious choice and more of grabbing a moment with the current equipment.

I placed Kellie near the window to get the soft, very directional light on her face.

Available light in the chapel.

As the ring bearer and flower girl were walking down the aisle, I was luck enough to capture the harsh, directional light of Grandma's flash, which backlit them beautifully.

Again, using the available light (actually more available darkness). The alter was lit, but the rest of the room had only candles for illumination causing the couple to be severely backlit.

The soft, enveloping lighting of a bounced flash.

This image is the result of two flashes. One on a lightstand creating the main exposure and backlighting the couple, and one on camera at one stop below the exposure to illuminate the near side of the couple.

This image is during the college fight song, with the off-camera flash creating the main exposure (and harsh directional lighting) and the on-camera at one stop below filling in the shadows and making the effect less harsh.

The final image of David's fist-pump is again the soft, enveloping, directional (from the right and above) light of bounce flash.

Flashin' for the fun of it!

On camera flash is at once over-rated and over-maligned. It is one of the most versatile and empowering tools in a photographer's bag. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to write a series of articles about lovin the flash!

Here is a quick overview of what I will be discussing.

Hey, Cory! Why is your flash sideways?



Quick Group Portrait Lighting for the PJ Wedding Shooter

Dynamic Lighting Using Off-Camera Flash


Flashin' in the Sun

The steps to a photography business - the short version!

Start by taking stock of what you have and what your goals are. What are your assets? Money, time, etc. How are your images? Fantastic, needs work, true beginner. Where do you want to be in 1 year? 3 years? 5 years?

My answers would go in this order:

1) Get what you need in the way of equipment to produce good work. This does not need to be the flashiest of gear (a 50 1.8 or 35 f2 could be a big improvement in creating a "different" look on the cheap as would a 85 1.8). A vivitar flash and some pocket wizards (or generic alternative) can create dramatic results in the right hands as Zach Arias has often shown. Also get something wide (20mm on 5d or a 12-24 f4 tokina on a crop camera) to add drama and see things a different way. With a couple of these suggestions, you can be producing a wide variety of different looks and have spent less than $1000. It also works as a backup strategy if something breaks.

2) Educate yourself in creating amazing images. One Light is a good place to start. As is the usual $100 Denis Reggie tour, or if Huy is doing a short course in your area. There are also many online resources. Second shooting for great shooters would work very well.

3) Once you know how to take amazing images, are inspired, well-equipped to take advantage of the opportunities you have or will get, and have a website capable of showing off your work in a up-scale, stylish way, then you can pour some money into advertising.

It is hard to work up a buzz as an average photographer, so educate yourself, equip yourself, produce some excellent work, THEN attack the marketplace. Spending money on advertising before you are ready is just wasting money. Getting yourself in position to attack the marketplace makes more sense.

What you have in the way of assets (namely time and money) will determine your strategy for the attack and the timetable involved. If you have more money than time (full time well-paying job and a family for example), spend the money on the best possible samples and advertise in the biggest, splashiest places. If your assets are more on the time side (part time working bachelor), then you might get a couple nice samples and try to get your name out by meeting everyone that will meet with you (florists, planners, venue coordinators, other photographers, etc.).

One Image from start to finish

This is an explanation of how an image was created from start to finish.

This image was taken during the couples first dance. I saw the fantastic hard light coming from the far side of them and positioned myself to point the camera directly at the light so I could work with the flare. I find working with flare to be pretty unpredictable, so I was just playing, trying to get the look that I wanted. Then I saw the brides daughter watching them dance and thought it was perfect.

After I had the shot, I brought the image into Photoshop. First I cropped the image. Then I duplicated the background layer and changed the blending mode (found at the top of the layers palette) to Overlay. I adjusted the opacity to 70 per cent. Next I added a Guassian Blur to the Overlay layer to give it the glowing look.

My next step was I made a black and white conversion layer (my favorite method is via gradient map). I adjusted the layer opacity to about 60 per cent.

My final step was to add curves adjustment layer. I pulled up on the middle of the curve until the daughter was the tone that I wanted her. Then I inverted the layer and painted only the little girl back in using the attached layer mask to the adjustment layer.

Flatten, save and done!

Cory Parris is wedding photographer in Seattle, Washington. He loves his wife, his kids, owning his own business, and photography. He is constantly mixing them together to see what he comes up with!

You can find Cory on the web at www.coryparris.com and here!