Sharp shadows and washed out faces

The thing I absolutely cannot stand about most of the "local" professional photographers (and some not local ones for that matter) is that it seems that they always feel the need to BLAST you directly with the flash. Man, this is not only annoying but its does not produce the best quality pics either.

Now there are times when you have no choice because of the circumstances and you just need to get the shot. There was this one time that I went to a friend's wedding and I just went along with my camera as usual (No he didnt ask me to bring along my camera, he knew I would but that's another issue). The official photographer, a nice lady, blasted them directly with a flash all through the ceremony. Needless to say I was in the background with my primes at a sub 2.0 F/stop snapping away. As sure as night follows day, the snapshots (and they were snapshots) my friend got from the offical photographer had dark backgrounds, sharp shadows and washed out faces, quite horrible.

Jason and Susannah - Flash at 90 degrees with bounce card

The days of conservative shutter releases are gone...no longer are we constrained by per roll development costs, if you take a picture and you don't like it you just press that little button with the trash can icon and voila!!!

So there is no need to guarantee an exposure by an indiscriminate use of direct flash.

So what now. BE CREATIVE SILLY!

Bounce it, diffuse it, gel it but whatever you do make it nice. TRUST me the flash is your friend...if you are nice to it. So to all the upcoming creatives out there, there is a better way, no more washed out faces and sharp shadows.