G was ill yesterday so I slept on the sofa, which didn’t go well. I drove the children to school this morning, had some porridge, then fell asleep for an hour.
I still felt tired so I thought I’d venture out. I drove to Kedington church and took some photos there. This time my challenge was to use only flashes for lighting, and no tripod. I put both camera and flash in manual mode and worked like that for the afternoon. Sometimes the flash worked well: it brought a light subject out from its background, and improved the quality of pictures of a dark subject in dark areas. Where I struggled was with monuments against the wall, often high up, with their sculpted figures in alcoves. This was a horrendous challenge.
If you placed the flashes to the side then you didn’t light up the full figure: the light just glanced their side, but of course a flash straight on leads to a flat image and drop shadows in the alcove. Then, if the monument is higher up, you can add the distortion from perspective and the ugly lighting from below because I can’t get the flashes to the same height. I did try putting one on the end of a trip and holding it up but still got horrible shadows. There was nowhere to bounce the flash off because there were only dark pillars leading up to a dark, cavernous ceiling.
In the evening I experimented with ways to soften a flash that didn’t involve bouncing it from a wall or ceiling, or buying more gear. Bouncing from a light reflector worked well, or shining through it if you took the reflective cover off and used it as a diffuser. I’d probably have to hold the reflector manually, though, which means putting the camera on a tripod and on self-timer.
