Flashing

Flash can be a pain, but with the right one, it can also be a hell of a lot of fun!

When my camera battery died at the wedding (a mistake that I am hitting myself over the head for, even now), the first thing that the groom did was to whip out his camera and tell me to start taking photos with that. I took one look at it and my expression must have shown my disappointment. "I know it's a piece of junk compared to yours..." I tried to stop him right there. His camera is no piece of junk. It is a pretty decent Fujifilm, a lot better than the camera I was using before I got my Canon, and certainly more than your average point and shoot. It wasn't the camera that I was upset about. It was the flash.

The bride and groom cutting the wedding cake with a dark backdrop.

I hate my own on-camera flash, and there is a good reason for this! You know those photos where the faces of the people in the front are completely over-exposed and the background is pitch black? What about those ones where just about every person has there eyes shut from the shock? Yeah, those are the kinds of photos that you get with an on-camera flash. It doesn't matter if you are using a Fujifilm point and shoot or a Canon 550D, the results are going to be fairly similar. Until recently, I thought this meant that I hated flash photography. And then I played around with the Canon Speedlite 580EX.

The exposure is just right with the Speedlite 580EX.

I managed to get my hands on one of these babies specifically for the wedding, My boss at work just happened to have one lying around and said that I could borrow it for awhile. And I was dubious. I did not like flash, I did not want to use flash, I knew that it was just going to be disastrous. For a good day or two I just sulked about the matter not wanting to try. And then I pulled myself together and got shooting and practicing... and found that flash photography is actually a lot of fun when you have a decent flash!


 It does take awhile to get used to bouncing the light and positioning the flash for the best effects. I blinded more than one person by capturing a shot when the flash wasn't at the right angle. I also got more than a couple of blank photos when I tried to take pictures with the flash too quickly after one another. And yet, the photos that I did get came out so well that I was really happy. No more over-exposed foreground and under-exposed background!

Of course, getting the background right also took a lot of practice. It is about more than just pointing the flash in the right direction. You also need to have your shutter speed and aperture settings down to a tee. Why? What ends up happening, especially in manual mode, is that the flash ends up only providing fill light for the picture. What this means is that the flash will only try to illuminate at a short distance, as most on-camera flashes do. But the difference is that it will also allow you to adjust your own settings to ensure that the background is equally well lit. This means that if there is little light, you will still need to shoot at a low shutter speed and with a wide aperture to ensure that the background is well lit. It also means that you will often need to bring your tripod along even when you are doing flash photography.

So what is the benefit of having a flash if you are still going to have to lower your settings? Well, the ISO will certainly be lower, and even if your background is slightly under-exposed, it is still a lot better than having a well exposed, completely blurry photograph or having an over-exposed, completely clear photograph with a black background.

So, what kind of flash do you want? To be honest, that's going to depend entirely on you. You can get some of the lower end flashes which just attach to your camera and acts as a stronger flash, but with the ability to add bits and bobs that will adjust the light the way you want it to be. You can get a mid-range flash which you can connect to your camera or can be held away from your camera and pointed in a specific direction that way (attached via a cable of some sort).  Or you can get one of the high-range flashes (like the Speedlite 580EX) which can swivel in any direction as well as doing all of the above. I have decided that after playing with the 580EX, it is the only way for me to go. It was far too much fun to ignore!

And so, I have a list of gear that I am scouring Bid or Buy for. First of all it's going to be a spare battery so that there won't be any more stupid mistakes. Second is going to be my Speedlite 580EX flash. Third is going to be a nice wide angle or fish-eye lens, and for the last two I am going to have to save up a ton.

Let me know what is on your photography wishlist!

500px

So I know that those who read this blog may be expecting a post about wedding photography, but I am not going to be writing that up quite yet. Instead, today I am going to write about a website that I have made use of quite a bit in the recent months. That website is 500px.com.

I heard about 500px a couple of months ago on one of the photography blogs that I follow. At the time, Google Plus had just come out, and this particular blogger (Scott Bourne) was unimpressed with their copyright policy in terms of photography. I have read a number of blogs on the subject and am still not sure where I stand on the matter, but this is not the point. The point is that Scott pointed out a photography site whose copyright policy he did approve of, and that site was 500px.

I was never one to get into the Flickr thing. I posted a few pics, but couldn't be bothered with coming back regularly to post and look up photographs of others. With 500px, on the other hand, I have been a lot more active. The theory behind the site is that people should only post their best photos. It is not a photo dump site. It is a site that allows you to display your best work, to build a portfolio and something that you can be proud of rather than just putting up photographs and never returning. You cannot save photographs from the site (which I suspect is why Scott recommended it), and while I know that there are ways around this, it is still a serious deterrent. You can also have a look at the latest pics, the best rated pics, follow specific photographers and like, dislike or fave their pics. Each picture is given a rating according to how many people have liked and disliked it, which I think is pretty handy, and any activity on your pics comes up on a feed on your own personal wall.

Reading over what I just said, I realise that this sounds all too familiar. It sounds like there is nothing that sets this site apart from Facebook or Flickr. But if you take a look at the site, you will quickly find just how different it is. This site is designed to be smart and professional. The way that photographs are displayed is clean and clear, uncomplicated and just showing the necessary basics. Even the wall is a lot cleaner and clearer than any other that I have used. Most walls on social networking sites are cluttered, and this is not the case with 500px.

In addition to a personal wall, there is also a space for each photographer to write a blog and to create a portfolio for themselves. As a regular (unpaying) member, you can create a single portfolio and are limited to about four themes for it. However, even the free themes are of impeccable quality and are perfect for creating a classy, professional looking portfolio that you can be proud of.

I should probably mention at this point that I am actually not one of the regular members. Shortly after creating my profile on the site, I found that another of the blogs that I follow was having a giveaway where the prize was an upgrade to an "Awesome" account on 500px. I entered and was one of the three winners. This means that I have access to a number of portfolio themes that were not there before and have no limit as to how many photographs I can upload in a week, in addition to other advantages that I haven't checked out quite yet. However, even before I had my Awesome account, I was incredibly pleased with the site. I am still using one of the free themes that had been available to me before the upgrade and, while I have recently been uploading a large number of photographs trying to get my portfolios off the ground, I am only doing so because I have an Awesome account and would have been happy to keep going with the regular one had I not been given this opportunity.

If there are photographers out there wanting to find a place to show their work and wanting to be professional about it, I would recommend skipping the Flickr route, forgetting Facebook and Google Plus (though possibly still posting on all of the above as well, since they are still the most popular way of having your photos noticed), but getting a 500px account. If you want to check out mine, you can find me at http://500px.com/evanescent.