Flashing about in low light

In my last post, I bragged a little about how great it is to have a proper flash and I thought I'd share some pictures and photography tips for you to judge yourselves. Although, a flash can be very useful in extremely bright situations with high contrast as well, this post is about using a flash in low light conditions.

On the left is a picture of my friend, Ken that was taken during a birthday party of a mutual friend. I was about 1.5 meters away from Ken then. I tilted my Nikon SB-600 flash towards the ceiling, which was fortunately white, set my aperture to maximum and took the shot. By directing my flash towards the ceiling, I was able to avoid a ghastly glare from the window and instead got a nice reflection of the living room from it. Nonetheless, I do feel that this picture is a little overexposed. I probably should have stepped back a meter or so.





On the right is a picture of Donald, our host for the evening. Likewise, no glare but a nice reflection. Another problem with aiming a flash directly at a subject is the unnatural tone it brings. Using a flash diffuser definitely does help but I still find that bouncing the flash off the ceiling yields the best results.






You can even get creative with your flash and bounce it off the wall to get a different effect, as I did with the picture on the left. This is one of the photography tips I got from a colleague. Make no mistakes, this shot could have and should have been better composed. But at least it demonstrates its effect.







On the right is Mark, from Australia. I added a little Sepia to this one.








And finally, Ken looks content. We all had a great time at the party that day and the photos I took were well received.

So, what do you think? I hope I gave you some useful tips on flash photography.