flash fill

flash fill

October 16, 2013

This week's challenge is flash fill, selected by Yours Truly. Check out my  pals for their interpretations on this theme: Fishing Guy, Katney, Imac, Lew, and Christine Anne.

This shot captures the idea, but I didn't notice from the little screen that it was blurry.

Again, I exposed for the colorful background, but still used flash and look! A spider--bonus!

This was taken after a rain and I still had wet petals.

Technically, I could have boosted the ISO for these shots and gone without the flash, but the color and sharpness would have disappeared from the subject in the foreground without the fill flash.  I like the way fill-flash makes the subject pop, while not completely overwhelming the background.  And I didn't use fancy flash, just the one built into my camera.

This is especially fun to do with portraits.  Natural light portraits can look very good in a soft way, but I like what it does to add fill flash and bring the face out from the shadows.  Plus, it makes the eyes sparkle (catch lights).  In the case of strong sunlight, I like fill flash, because it softens harsh contrasts, washes out the wrinkles and makes the face look CoverGirl-pretty instead of Hitchcock-stark.

Speaking of "Stark,"  I was invited to a masquerade party this weekend.  I'm going as Tony Stark (Iron Man).  I stayed up after midnight figuring out a way to make the Arc Reactor.  I'll probably add a pic or two to next week's post, regardless of the theme.