Sole into it wrote in post #10076984
Thanks for all the input everyone. I really appreciate it. I actually just got a new flash a couple days ago and once I'm through with classes and such I'll definitely be testing it out. Any quick tips on bouncing the flash?
Robert_Lay - I guess my main focus will be taking portraits and natural shots of people. I want the pictures to come out looking fairly natural. Taking out a lot of harsh light which I'm sure the new flash will take care of. Any tips?
I'm glad to see that you are interested in portraits - as a painter, I much prefer doing portraits over landscapes.
In portraits the lighting is even more important than it is in landscapes - the reason being that in portraits you do not create 3-D realism in the way you do so in landscapes. In landscapes the 3-D effect is created by composing your scene with foreground interest, middle ground interest and background interest.
However, in portraits you generally do not have but one plane to worry about and that is the plane of the subject of the portrait - so, how do you create the 3-D realism? The answer is that you create 3-D realism in your subject by creating areas of light and areas of shadow that create the illusion of 3-dimensionality. For example, Rembrandt realized that you had to have shadows to delineate the facial contours. He preferred a light that cast shadows diagonally across the face. Those shadows made the facial contours quite clear. If instead you illuminate your subject with light shining directly into the face (flat lighting), you end up with virtually no features at all. Try taking the flash off-camera and hold it above and to one side of your subject and see if the resulting shadows falling diagonally across the face don't make the face look more realistic.
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