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In photography, “Master and Slave” flashes is lazy language. We can do better.

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If you’re an avid photographer shooting with remote-controlled strobes, you’ll have come across this issue: One set of flashes is connected to your camera, and it controls all the other flashes in the photo studio.

Almost all of these systems use the same terminology: “Master” for the trigger that is doing the controlling, and “Slave” for the receiving strobe. It seems convenient because the language is so clear — until you pause for half a moment, and think about what that use of language does to normalize and casualize literal slavery.

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This beginner’s guide to using strobes will help you decide what to buy and how to use it

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Speedlights and strobes can be quite intimidating to new photographers who’ve never had personal experience with them before. Particularly strobes. They’re really not all that difficult to get to grips with. There is a learning curve, for sure, but it’s a fairly short one to get going with the basics.

Photographer Mark Duffy recently gave a tutorial on the basics of strobes in a live stream for UK gear distributor, Transcontinenta. Not wanting to limit the information contained within to just the live stream viewers, Mark’s also shared a copy of the stream to his YouTube channel for everybody else to enjoy, too.

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How to use flash if you don’t like photos to look flashy

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If I lay my cards on the table, in my personal and professional work I prefer to avoid the use of flash in favour of natural light. In an ideal world, I like nothing better than working with a fleeting beam of winter sunlight that glances across a face full of character, producing the type of photograph that would typically grace the cover of National Geographic.

The trouble is, as a busy corporate photographer, it’s much more likely I have to take a series of senior executive portraits from a basement office, generously artificially lit with horrible overhead fluorescent tubes, working to shoot directors who can spare about three minutes of their time and are itching to be off back to work.

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How to add flash to your shot to create portraits at night

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The night time can produce some wonderful colours, especially when shooting against a city skyline, or even within the city at ground level. The colours from the sky and clouds along with lights on buildings, in windows, signs and displays can make for some very compelling and colourful imagery. But what if you want to shoot portraits against that background?

In this video, photographer David Bergman talks about how we can add flash to our night time shots and mix them in with the ambient exposure to produce some great night portraits.

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What is flash recycle time and how/why does it work the way it does?

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If there’s one constant when it comes to flash, whether it’s speedlights or strobes, is recycle time. It’s the time you have to wait for the flash to charge back up between shooting one photo and the next. It applies to just about every type of flash, except for the recent array of hybrid flashes like the Godox FV200.

But what causes recycle times? Why do we have to wait? Can’t it just suck juice from the battery or the socket on the wall as it needs it? Well, nope. It can’t. And this video from photographer Mike Smith explains why.

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Check out this amazing one-light portrait setup you’ve probably never even considered

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Portrait photographer Jiggie Alejandrino is a big fan of shooting with just a single light for portraits. He’s already shown us some pretty cool and dramatic one-light setups in the last few months. But now he’s back with a very interesting setup that most of have probably never even considered. And that’s bringing the softbox overhead pointing straight down.

It’s certainly not something I’ve usually considered. At least, not for portraits. It’s a technique I use often for small products to simulate a big cloudy sky, but with larger subjects like people, that cast some pretty obvious shadows, how well does it work? Well, looking at Jiggie’s demonstration, it works pretty well!

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How to create lighting gradients in your shots with coloured gels

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Using coloured gels can be a little unforgiving, especially if you’re new to using strobes. But one of the biggest reasons using gels can be tricky, is due to how hard it can be to use multiple coloured gels in the same setup. Coloured lights do not play well together and unlike paint, where you can create new and wonderful colours by mixing them, mixing coloured light often results in dull, washed-out colours. Coloured gels do not mix and consequently must ordinarily be kept separate in your shot at all times.

Thankfully though, in today’s setup, I will be showing you how to mix coloured gels with incredible ease, in fact, it’s so easy, we’ll only be using one light to do it!

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Here is your perfect lighting setup for shooting high school graduate portraits

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Having been a school and graduation Photographer for 20 years, I have changed my lights several times, always looking at improving my workflow, quality and stability light output, photographing hundreds of pupils per school per day, the importance of stable, colour consistent lighting is essential for fast post-editing and printing.

By far the best and most rewarding move was to go all battery-powered lighting in 2015. I will give a few details of how I have tweaked my kit over the years to get to my perfect balance of power, weight set up and transport.

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Watch these four awesome one-light portrait setups in just 10 minutes

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Most of us end up getting so bogged down with gear at some point that it can be difficult to choose exactly what gear we’re going to want to take to a session – especially when it comes to lighting. I’m sure I’m not the only one whose bags are comprised of 20% gear we’ll use and 80% “just in case” gear that we hardly ever use.

Sometimes, though, it’s nice to bring it down to the bare basics, carry less gear, and keep things simple with just one light. And for those just starting out, perhaps one light is all you may have. But fear not! In this video, photographer John Gress walks us through four very effective lighting setups that each use only a single light.

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Stop asking photographers what flash power they used – it’s irrelevant

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It’s a question that’s often seen in photography groups. For some reason, people want to know all of the technical specs and exposure settings of every photo posted to those groups. In flash groups, people even want to know what flash power level you were at – as if it was actually a useful question to know the answer to.

Photographer Rob Hall sees this question all the time, so he’s decided to respond with a video. But this isn’t just a rant about why it’s a dumb question – well, not completely. Rob also tries to inject some knowledge to explain why the answer to the question is irrelevant and suggests some questions that you should be asking instead.

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