Light is very sensitive when composing photographs. It can be tricky most of the time and only way to get around is try different settings until you get what you want. Some people may like one effect and others may like other way around. So until you try it, you can’t judge which technique is better than the other one.
I have seen many photographers divided over the argument of using Direct flash vs Bounce flash. There are some cases you may want to use direct flash and sometimes you don’t want to use direct flash at all. It also depends on under what situation you are composing photographs. Most of the time photographers do not want to use direct flash light for portrait photography because it may produce glare highlights, shiny foreheads due to the light coming out of the powerful source from short distance and that hits directly to the subject. There are so many ways you can soften the light and give more natural look to the photographs.
Photographers are practicing different techniques to soften the light which helps to reduce shadows due to harsh light. Mainly they use either flash diffuser or bouncing the flash lights using any bouncer (ceiling or any reflector). If you do not have flash diffuser, you can make your own by using small indexing card over the flash unit and tape it so that it bounces light to the ceiling to reduce its intensity and producing soft and natural effect to the photographs. But when using bouncing light, you have to be very careful about the surface from which you are bouncing the light because bouncing light will pickup the color of that bouncing surface and that directly affects your photograph.
While preparing for this post, I took two shots very quickly. One with direct flash lights and one using bouncing light. In both cases I used off camera flash SB-600 and fired flash from the angle. First I used direct flash to the subject and second time I bounced flash light using white ceiling surface over my top.
Direct Flash Light
Bouncing Flash Light
Note : Both photographs are taken straight out of the camera memory without any post-processing.
Like I already said we all have different choices but in this case I like the bouncing light effect better which looks more natural with soft bouncing light than the other one with direct harsh light producing unpleasant highlights and shadows. But if you have any different thoughts, please feel free to comment.
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About UM3$H
I often grapple with which to use, Bounce or Direct; sometimes it’s trial and error to what will look better.
Thanks for this post!
And believe it or not, learning from the experiment is better than anything. I am glad that you liked it.