Indoor Flash photography 2

[Yisehaq]

Dear all,

Here is another batch of indoor flash photography.
In these case the major change from my previous try is spot metering. Most of the time I measured from the table cloth which was close to zero compensation.

1.
2.
One question here. How do I avoid the shade created by the ear of the man on the left side? This came from bouncing the flash on the ceiling. Any advice?
3.
4.
5.

What do you think?

[Iguanasan]

Without getting into analyzing all the individual images they all look pretty good to me. Natural looking skin tones, everything seems well lit. With respect to the shadow of the man's ear the only idea I would have would be to have two flashes. Other than that it's all about angles and finding an angle that will cast the shadow directly behind and therefore hidden by the subject.

I'm sure Marko will have much better comments.

[Marko]

Nice Yisehaq! The skin tones are much better exposed in this set!

The shadow you see in shot 2 is very minor and I would not worry about it. But if you did want to get rid of it you'd need to "fill it" with an additional flash or reflector.

To practice visualizing where flash will fall just take a flashlight in a darkish room and aim it at a person or mannequin from different directions. You note that when the light is directly in front of subject, no shadow.

In this case though the 2 people are at different planes to the camera - so you would naturally get a shadow behind at least one of these subjects if they were lit by direct flash.

You could have tried bouncing the light off the back wall (if that was possible) instead of the ceiling. The shadow would likely have been softer.

Hope that helps- marko

[Yisehaq]

Thanks a lot Iggy & Marko!