rprouty wrote:
Well I guess I now know everything there is to know about flash
The only difference conceptually between flash and natural light is the rate it falls off with distance you need to take into account when lighting foreground vs. background and keeping everything you want correctly exposed a similar distance. Inverse-Square Law
Beyond that it's just asking yourself when selecting modifier / bouncing: "Do I want this light to work and look like the sun or skylight?" If the former you use it directly. If the latter you find ways to make it come from as many different ways as possible. Then ask: "Do I want it to look natural or not?" That answer determines whether you want it overhead or not. Then to determine the angle of to the face just consider what time of day you want it to look like. When the catchlights in the eyes wind up at 2 o'clock it will look like natural light at that time of day...
Think in those terms and use fill on a bracket with a off camera flash 45° from the nose sideways and 45° from the eye line vertically and you will wind up with natural look flash lighting. Keep it centered and you get butterfly similar to noon day skylight... http://super.nova.org/TP/SnowHead2009_Solstice.jpg
Lighting is all around, you just need to observe and think a bit about where it is coming from and its character, then copy what you see with the flash
Lots of the responses mention "bounce light" , and of course bounce is preferable - when available. 9 out of 10 weddings I shoot are in large ballrooms with high ceilings & mirrored walls (in the Baltimore area there is a chain of such ballrooms for hire that specializes in mirrors!). Therefore bounce is rarely an option for me. Also, did nobody mention vertical shooting? Without a bracket I can't get evenly exposed pictures when shooting portrait style. Except for the formals I don't have multiple strobes (although I sometimes use an additional quantum strobe bounced off a far wall for additional light). Anyway, brackets do give me nice photos with a small diffuser that I can pop off when needed. I do try to stay in good physical shape so I can carry the added weight of a bracket.
