FLASH!

Ahaaaaaaa....

So the great Freddie Mercury sang.

Recently I had an 'ahaaaaa' moment with my flash. A while ago I bought a speedlite 430EXll in a closing-down sale for a bargain price. I put batteries in it, read the manual...took a couple of test shots, then put it in a cupboard and periodically took it out of its packaging, stared at it, then put it away again.

I like natural light. I'm comfortable with natural light. I know how my camera works in natural light. I take half decent portraits (I think) in natural light. Flash is scary...and new...and scary...and suddenly I'm sounding like my eldest son and I wonder where he gets it from...sheesh!

I've been playing with a torch and long exposures and still life recently and it suddenly occurred to me, while I was taking this shot, that I actually understood what I was doing and I knew where to hold the light and for how long. I actually understood artificial lighting. At roughly the same time I had the realisation that if I wanted to take any portrait shots (my other passion) between now and spring I was either going to have to move somewhere where the light was better or learn to use my Speedlite.

"It's just another light source," I told myself, "That's all."

And so it is...it reflects off surfaces in just the same way as natural light and is just as versatile. So I've been playing...and playing ...and playing...and reading 'The Hot Shoe Diaries', and bouncing light off reflectors and walls and ceilings, and making cardboard snoots and...now I want another speedlite, but a bigger, better one, which will allow me to use my first one as a slave...

Bring on the dark days of winter :-)