Lets talk about lighting in photography. Or I should say my past avoidance of using speedlites both on an off camera. I stuck to natural lighting outside, or whatever lighting I could get indoors. While I’ve been able to get some nice photos just sticking to that formula at least outdoors, many of my indoor photos lacked a bit of definition to them. That’s where off camera flash comes in.
I use to do what almost every newbie photographer would do: attach the speedlite to the camera, pull it all the way down, point it forward and proceed to grimace at how bad it looked. I thought seriously learning on camera flash was too much of a hassle, and off camera flash too daunting to even attempt. So after coming back from otakon 2017, I decided it’s time to buckle down and learn. I read a book about lighting, checked out a ton of online articles, took advantage of a few skillshare.com classes, and spent a ton of time watching YouTube videos. And after a few weeks of practice…….I realized it’s wasn’t that hard at all. It was actually fun and helped me learn much more about composition and setup. Now I no longer fear that blown out looking picture and try to use flash every chance I get. I wish I learned this much sooner but I guess everyone works at their own pace. I would recommend every beginner photographer to learn about flash, especially off camera sooner rather than later.
