DIY rig allows for bounced flash even when there's no ceiling to aim it.

    One of the easier ways to improve your flash photography is to bounce it off the ceiling or a wall.

    As long as the surface is white, or close to white as possible, it will soften the light and give a more pleasing appearance to the subject.

    There are just a couple problems with it, though.

    First, just bouncing off the ceiling by itself will cause shadows around the eyes and under the nose. That's because the light is only coming from above. Years ago, I got around that problem with a double-headed flash, where a smaller flash filled in the shadow areas, creating a great even light.

    Second, you need a ceiling, or at least one that's not too far away. Trying to bounce a flash off the ceiling of a Gothic cathedral or indoor stadium is not going to work as well as a standard-height ceiling.

    The solution to the problem is to use a bounce card that gives the flash something to bounce off, both filling in the shadows and allowing for a softer light in places where a ceiling bounce is clearly not practical.

    Most speedlights today are equipped to a small plastic card you can slide out that reflects some light forward while the main flash bounces off the ceiling, balancing the light. But that does not quite address the problem if you're shooting outdoors.

    There's a variety of flash modifiers out there that will allow you to bounce the flash forward, creating a softer light than a direct flash while avoiding the shadows from just an overhead lighting.

    The one I use is one I found on Pieroway.com. Unfortunately, the site has since been suspended, but fortunately it is still available on Archive.org's Wayback Machine. The site has PDFs that you can print out with the pattern for the bounce card, with the option to print one with a plain black back or one with the logos for Canon, Nikon or Sony.

    One of the things I like with this design is that it goes over the face of the flash, giving the light something to bounce off of. Other cards allow the flash to go straight out to the ceiling, which is fine if you have a ceiling nearby.

    While the site recommends printing it on card stock and making the necessary folds, I found that using two sheets of craft foam — one black and one white — works better, as it's more durable, the black layer prevents light spillage and it can be folded if you score the fold lines with an X-Acto knife.

    The site recommends attaching it with a rubber band, which I did when I used a cardstock version as a proof of concept. For the final, I used Velcro fasteners to attach to the flash unit.

    Here's what it looks like on my flash:

    But how does it work?

    Here's a photo with the flash directly on the subject, in this case a plush Opus from "Bloom County." (The following pictures only have lens corrections, color balance and sharpening applied.)

    Bouncing off ceiling.

    The flash's built-in flash card.

    The Pieroway modifier.

    What do you think?

Feeling the need for speed? Try slowing down

    You're taking a photo of something that's moving, and you want to convey a sense of speed, even if the subject isn't moving quickly.

    The quickest and best way to do this is to slow down your shutter speed, which will cause the moving subject to blur in its line of motion and create the illusion that it is moving quickly even if it's moving relatively slowly.

    In this picture taken near the Northern Pacific Railway Museum in Toppenish, Wash., I got a freight train going past the old depot that houses the museum. At this point, the train is passing through town and just went over a rail crossing, so it's only going about 25 mph. Not terribly fast.

    But I set my ISO to 100 and stopped down to f-29, which gave me a shutter speed of 1/5 of a second. That caused the train to blur significantly as it went down the rails, while the depot and lamp post remain clear, helping further sell the concept.

    (In case you're wondering, I actually hand-held this photo as it was a relatively spur-of-the-moment shot. Since I don't drink coffee, my hands are fairly steady. But a tripod would not hurt, especially if you want to use even slower shutter speeds.)