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This crash course teaches you everything you need to know about using flash for portraits

Flash is almost an inevitability when it comes to portraits. At some point or another, you’re going to find yourself frustrated with the “natural light” and you’re going to want to either try to overpower it or complement it to improve its looks or you’re going to give in completely, head indoors and go for a more studio-style setup away from the wind and rain and crappy weather. Whatever the reason, it’s as inevitable as Thanos.

But where do you begin? What gear do you need to get started? What do all the terms mean? How do you use them? What are modifiers? Key light? What? Well, all these questions and more are answered in this hour and a half long video from photographer Ed Verosky. It’s a complete crash course on using flash to shoot portraits, although much of what’s said applies to flash in any context.

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Five steps to faking golden hour lighting with just one flash

Golden hour is the type of lighting most photographers swear by. And indeed, it’s hard to go wrong when you shoot around this hour of the day. But you know how it is: sometimes the weather or the timing just don’t work for you. Still, there are ways to “cheat” and create your own golden hour.

In this video from Adorama, Pye Jirsa guides you through five simple steps you can take to mimic the golden hour lighting in outdoor portraits. It’s pretty easy and doesn’t even require a complicated setup. All you need is one flash, a color gel, and some photo editing skills.

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The inspiration and process behind my personal project: Three Heads in a Row

Hi, Kersten here. I’m a portrait photographer based on the outskirts of London, England, and co-host of the Camera Shake Photography Podcast. Now, you may not have heard of it but if you ARE one of our tens of listeners out there – it’s nice to meet you.

It comes as no surprise to most people that the last 18 months have been, to put it mildly, challenging. Over here in the UK we had to endure several total lockdowns, which meant that business as we know it went south and especially for us portrait photographers, life got a whole lot more complicated. Standing only a few feet opposite someone, taking their picture in a studio environment was not only frowned upon but outright illegal. Shock horror. For some of us that presented an opportunity; a chance to slow down, re-evaluate and get creative with a personal project or two.

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Three beginner off-camera flash mistakes you really need to avoid

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When you’re first starting out photographing people with flash, it can be a bit overwhelming. Even if you’re used to shooting with natural light, the pieces don’t all click into place right away and it’s easy to make mistakes and not be entirely sure how to rectify the problem. So, here’s Francisco Hernandez with three of the mistakes he sees new off-camera flash photographers making and how to resolve them.

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Here’s when, why and how to use flash for outdoor portraits in bright daylight

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Have you been wondering why anybody would use flash outdoors during the daytime? After all, it’s daytime. It’s pretty bright already, isn’t it? So, you’re not ramping your ISO up high, so why would anybody use flash outside? Well, yes, it’s bright-ish, but the natural light isn’t always giving you what you want. Sometimes it needs a little help.

In this video from Andrew Boey at Beyond Photography, we learn how, when and why you might want to use flash outdoors in the daytime – even on a bright sunny day.

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Does your flash distance really matter?

If you’re new to studio flash photography, you may be a little confused about how everything works. The types, sizes, and shapes of light modifiers, the light’s placement and distance from the subject… There’s a lot to learn, and in this article, we’ll focus on the distance of the flash from your subject. Does it really matter how far you place the light? Spoiler alert: it does. And in this great video from Adorama, Gavin Hoey will give you plenty of examples of how and why the flash distance affects your studio images.

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This is the one simple thing you need to know about working with bounce flash

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Sometimes, as much as we might hate it, we’re forced to stick a flash on the hotshoe. Perhaps it’s something not too important and we just want a bit more light on things. But maybe it’s something very important and you really need to not screw it up. Whatever the reason, getting great light out of an on-camera flash isn’t that difficult. There’s just one thing you need to think about.

In this video, photographer Neil van Niekerk explains that one important thing and how it affects your photos in very simple and easy to understand terms. Yes, I’m going to spoil it now, but that one thing is the inverse square law. But don’t worry, there’s no maths or charts here. Just a simple practical demonstration that’ll make it easy for you to get decent shots when using on-camera flash.

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How to use scrims and strobes outdoors in bright sunlight for amazing portraits

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So before my regulars start to suspect that I’ve been kidnapped and forced to write this against my will, yes this is indeed a lighting setup article that involves natural light! But don’t worry, we’ll quickly skip over the easy, beginner daylight setup and move on to the adult version that combines gels and strobes later on. So, if you’re suspiciously U.V. averse to the point where you could star in an Anne Rice novel, don’t worry, stick around to the end and I’ll have something a little more visually engaging for you there.

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Frio relaunches as a one-stop shop for small light mounting accessories

Frio, the maker of the Frio cold shoe has relaunched under the new management of Imaging Brands, the company which also owns Tether Tools, as a new one-stop shop for off-camera light mounting solutions for photographers and filmmaking. The original Frio cold shoe has now been renamed the Frio Hold and the product line has been expanded with a number of new mounting solutions.

The new lineup includes a number of products for mounting hotshoe based lights including speedlights and LEDs, in various ways to help offer you more versatility on location when choosing where to put your lights, microphones, monitors or other small devices.

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How to get a good natural light look when using flash outdoors

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I’m always asked why I use flash outdoors and the answer is quite simple. The natural light doesn’t always give me what I want. Sometimes I want to complement or augment it and sometimes I want to override it completely. There’s nothing wrong with natural light and I use that too when it looks good, but yeah… It just doesn’t always look the way I want it to.

But how can you work with flash outdoors and still have it look natural when shooting things like weddings or portraits? Well, in this video from Vanessa Joy, we look at several different ways you can light a subject with flash, balancing it with the natural light to create a natural look. And, yes, there’s more to it than simply adjusting the power level to even out the brightness.

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