Photography Lighting Tutorial - Bounce Flash

In this part of our photography lighting tutorial series, I will take a look at bounce flash. This technique requires a flash gun with a movable head – which usually means a digital SLR camera, though some compact cameras do have the flash hot shoe necessary to mount a flash gun.

The movable head on the flash gun allows you to point it away from the model and bounce its light off walls or ceilings, thus avoiding that classic flash photography look which is almost always unflattering.

Here is a typical example showing when and how to use bounce flash…

When the time came to take a series of Boudoir Photographs of Natalia, I had chosen the location in advance - a west facing bedroom – but the weather was quite dull and so the light in the room was incredibly flat.

I took some test shots while Natalia got ready and the histogram confirmed what my eyes were telling me; there was a really limited tonal range (the hump of the histogram was only covering about half the x axis).

My lighting plan was to shoot with the window as my main light source, to the left hand side of the model, but with so little direct light there would be little contrast between her lit and unlit sides and the photographs would be dull and lifeless.

I fitted my 430EX Canon flashgun and experimented a bit with bouncing the light off various surfaces – such as the wall behind me, the ceiling and finally the window-side wall.

This last choice was an immediate improvement. By adding extra side light to boost the windows output the contrast in the shot was improved, without making an obviously flash lit photograph.

For this particular set, there was an additional benefit – but one that should serve as a bit of a warning when using bounce flash. The walls in this room are magnolia, so the light that was bounced onto Natalia was given an extra warmth which suited the shot very well. If the walls had been green for example the results would have been far less flattering! For this reason, photographers often bounce flash off ceilings as they are usually painted white.

See more examples in the Boudoir Photography Gallery

Or go back to Photographic Lighting