When i teach it's not about absolutes. There are very few rules to photography. It is a blending of science (the things we can't change) and art (the things we can) in the truest sense. I use flash when it adds to the flavor of the photographic stew i'm creating. I have my reasons for using speedlights and 95% of the time I feel i can create my stew with them. That doesn't mean that your stew should taste the same. The other point i try to get across is that a lot of photography is about problem solving. Creating interesting images when the ambient light doesn't give you what you want.  I joke that i am an available light shooter because my speedlights are always available but like most jokes it's rooted in reality. For me when I survey a scene I'm automatically thinking in terms of where I would place lights to make the most of it. 

This weeks shoot with Francesca Fancy Mars is a key example of that. New York City in the winter is an absolute crap shoot when it comes to light and weather and sky. The day we decided to shoot was warm for December 1st but that was the nicest thing I could say about it. It was damp and overcast. For soft natural light photography those conditions can be great but if you want images that pop off the page the flat sky leaves something to be desired. For me adding light from a speedlight was the answer when i came upon something you don't see in NYC every day. Rolls of hay leftover from Halloween on a Brooklyn Street just 50 feet away from the Cyclone roller coaster. We both thought it looked like fun and decided to make it part of the shoot. We were almost done having done a few looks on the beach so this was going to be the end of the shoot. The problem was that the area around the hay was less than attractive and not in the way that I generally like (see all the examples of abandoned fashion in my work) but more in a busy kind of way that i didn't enjoy and I thought detracted from Ms. Mars' beauty.

 I set up two SB-910's making one group A and the other B and tried to arrange them close but out of the shot. The wind was kicking up so my umbrella was a no go. I tried to use my Westcott Rapid Box but without a VAL or sand bags (kinda ironic at the beach) none of the modifiers would stay. That was ok. I've been teaching myself to get solid results with no modifier for years now and while for some jobs you NEED to modify the light my style has come to encompass the punchy dramatic light that comes out of a bare speedlight such as the Nikon SB-910. The key to getting it even somewhat soft is to get it close since the softness of the light is dictated by the relation of the size of the light source to the size of the subject. So the closer it is the softer it will be.

This is the shot from that exact set up. The shots were taken 7 seconds apart with no changes to location of power. The Nikon ITTL system does exactly what i want it to do 90% of the time and with some brain power added in performs perfectly about 99% of the time. With a model that wants to move quite a bit and a photographer that is also constantly moving the calculations that the computer and flash brains can are far more accurate than my brain.

By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com

Two more images from that set without moving the lights. The below shot changes only that i turned the axis of the flash so that the widest part was up and down instead of left and right. This allowed for more coverage of Francesca's body.

By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com