Using flash, part 1

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I'm a huge fan of using flash to light a scene. I always take my three 580 EX II Speedlites and ST-E2 wireless transmitter along to weddings. Of course the key challenge is to make it look as if you haven't used flash. The picture above was taken on a very dimly-lit staircase and the flash was bounced off the wall to my left with -1 stop of flash exposure compensation. I think it's not a bad approximation to a window-lit portrait (please let me know if you disagree - if I'm not fooling anybody I need to know about it!) However, bouncing flash is not the panacea that you might at first think, as I shall discuss in my next post.