Flash exercise

Last weekend I held a two day workshop on using hand held flashes or Speedlites. By the end of the two days we had created some great images and everyone walked away with a better understanding of how to incorporate their speedlites into their photography.

One of the exercises that we did was to use the speedlites as accent lights only, using another light source as the primary light. In this example, we used a window as our main light. Window light can be a very beautiful and soft light source but very often the background can get too dark. If the subject has dark hair, then you run the risk of loosing the definition between the hair and the background, ultimately creating a not so nice portrait. this first image is a good example of how nice window light can go bad.

In the next image a speedlite has been incorporated to light the background. Notice how the subject now stands out from the background and the image has a greater sense of depth to it. Also notice that as the background comes closer to the tonality of the clothes that the model is wearing, the less the clothes dominate the image.

In the final image, we put a speedlite to camera right and behind the subject. This adds a little more sepeeration to the hair and picks up more detail. The image was then reframed to eliminate more of the dress and fill the image with the subject. To finish off, in Lightroom we did some minor skin softening and added a vignette.