My friend Carlo gave me a manual flash when he heard I was keen on exploring taking portraits with a flash. All my photography to date has relied on natural light and even the self portraits I take are done with natural light blessed with a fast lens.
Carlo himself was gifted with a LightPix Labs Q20ii pocket flash. He has since upgraded to a Godox flash for his event photography and the mobile flash unit was left unused. I was very grateful for the chance to learn how flash can change my photography.
I started my experiments recreating a portrait I’ve always wanted to take of myself. I was inspired by similar portraits where half of the subject is in shadows and the other half lit by light, either from a natural source or from a flash. Armed with a vision and a few YouTube videos, I played around with the intensity of the flash, direction of the light and supplementing the light with a diffuser or a reflector. Sitting in a dark room, using my mobile camera app to control my camera on a tripod and tweaking settings on the flash was indeed a unique learning experience.
I was very pleased with the results in my makeshift studio.
My next learning experience was trying to use the flash on my husband out in our garden. The outdoor environment provided a different complication as I did not have any walls to bounce the light off. Trying to make portraits in a wet and muddy environment in between showers of rain also made things tricky. I dropped the flash on the ground and thank my lucky stars, the muddy ground cushioned the flash.
I find myself growing in confidence to guide my model. However, trying to hold the flash with my left hand while cradling the camera with my right was a little tricky. The three images below show the progression from natural light, flash with reflector and lastly, flash with a diffuser. In potentially a false sense of scientific approach on a creative project, I applied the same super super mild S curve edit on all three images.
I’m torn. I’m not sure if the flash made the image better. The natural light version feels most comfortable to me. I love the way it captures Chris naturally. However, that is my comfort zone and I know that look very well. I am a creature of habit. Having said that, the second image is the most well exposed and I am surprised at how balanced the image looks.
The last image is surprising. I initially did not like it. The image was too dark and Chris could not stand out as the main subject. However, if I edited it differently, the image becomes my favourite. The flash removed the shadows from Chris face in the natural light version, which in turn allowed me to lift the exposure of his face naturally without creating sharp contrasts.
Thank you Carlo for giving me so much fun this weekend. And thank you my patient husband Chris.