Indirect Lighting

In this FotoTV workshop, photographer Martin Krolop explains to viewers how to get the best results when using a shoe mount flash as an indirect lighting source.

Krolop shows viewers how to avoid the most common mistake a photographer can make when using an indirect lighting source by bouncing the light source off the ceiling. First Krolop sets the camera setting so that the only light source to reach his model is the light from the shoe mount flash unit. He starts off by directing his flash to illuminate his subject full frontal, and then he shoots another example with indirect bounce light from the ceiling. Most photographers do not realize they are still shooting with direct flash to subject light. If the model still has a line of sight to the flash, then it is not indirect lighting. This will result in off cast shadows and unpleasing tones when shooting portraits.

Since the flash is near to the camera’s axis when shooting the flash directly, the shadows fall toward the rear of the subject. When changing that to whereas the flash is first bounced off of a surface, the subject is illuminated predominately from above, which is distinguished by the top half of the photo being brighter as the bottom half.

Krolop further goes through several calculation scenarios to help photographers more easily understand the distance light travels from the bounce surface to the subject, changing the lighting distribution but not lighting characteristic.