Photographers who do not specialize in portraiture or other genres involving working with people may not own dedicated professional lighting equipment suitable for the task. But almost every photographer owns a speedlight, and you might be surprised by how versatile they can be for lighting portraits. This great video tutorial will show you how to take effective portraits using a single speedlight.
Coming to you from Mark Wallace with Adorama TV, this fantastic video tutorial will give you lots of helpful tips for shooting portraits with just a single speedlight. If you only work with people occasionally, you might only have a speedlight or two, and as such, it might not make financial sense to invest in more expensive dedicated monolights or modifiers. On the other hand, there are also situations where you simply will not have the time or the space to set up larger units, and you might need to light a portrait on the fly. Such scenarios often arise for wedding and events photographers, who might have to change locations rapidly and frequently and will often have to grab impromptu portraits on the fly. Check out the video above for lots of helpful techniques from Wallace, and give it a try while you are at home!
The final results still looked like head-on flash. It's tough to get creative lighting in an environment like that without looking like you're shooting in a giant light tent. You need some dark surface(s) to regulate bounce if you want to start shaping light in an environment like that. If you're gonna bounce, make sure you take a white balance of your bounce surface, because it may not be perfectly white. Either that or correct in post.
Thanks Alex for sharing this video, that is the idea, to keep it simple!! It was a pleasure for me to produce it with Mark in Buenos Aires