If you find yourself either stuck at home, or stuck in a creative rut, get out your glassware and make some interesting art.
Gavin Hoey, an OM Systems ambassador in England who is one of the regular hosts on Adorama's Youtube channel (Disclaimer: Adorama is not a sponsor of this blog. They just have great video tutorials.) did a video showing how to make abstract photos using water-filled glasses.
Hoey demonstrates with graphic backgrounds how the water in the glass acts as a lens and refracts the image behind it, which leads to interesting effects depending on the background.
A fun thing in the video is we realize that, when talking about having a towel, Hoey's also a Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy fan, and a man to be reckoned with.
So you've decided to get a speed light to go with your camera, but you don't have a way to use it off-camera, or you don't have the space for a portrait.
What do you do?
Gavin Hoey, one of the photographers featured on Adorama's Youtube channel (disclaimer: I am not sponsored by Adorama, but its channel is a good resource) goes over some ways to get flattering light with a camera-mounted flash.
(Note: This is for flash units mounted on the camera's hot shoe. If you're using a pop-up flash, these tips will not work for you, but check out the diffuser we featured earlier.)
What Hoey suggests is essentially bouncing the flash, preferably off a white or neutral-colored wall or ceiling. If you bounce off a colored wall, you're going to get a color cast.
But what I found interesting was Hoey's suggestion for bouncing off a wall behind you if the room's small enough. Along with creating a softer light by bouncing it off a larger reflector, this over-the-shoulder move can also allow you to avoid the harsh look of a subject against a black background since the foreground/background light are now more balanced, thanks to to the inverse-square law.
For those not familiar with this law of physics, light falls off at the inverse square of the distance from the light source. At 3 feet away from the light source, the light is 1/9 the brightness it would have at 1 foot. As you go farther out, the difference decreases, so you can actually get a more even lighting the farther back the light source.
You do have to pay for that with either a wider aperture or a higher ISO.
Another tip Hoey offered for overall studio photography is to first take a test shot with the settings you plan to use but no flash. The goal is to have the frame completely black, which means that the ambient lighting will not have any effect on the picture, and that all lighting will come from the flash. That can also be helpful if you're in a situation with mixed light sources.
