The craft of photography revolves around light. Just look at the word, ‘photo’, meaning light and ‘graphia’ meaning writing or drawing. You’re literally painting with light. Without light there is no photograph. Have you ever thought flash was a secondary thing to your photography, something you only use to illuminate the subject? Do you just point it forward and blast them in the face with light?

The pop-up flash on your camera serves that purpose, a boring blast of light to the face. Or, you can use it to trigger off an off camera flash. Have you ever considered that flash is for:

Creating texture

Creating tonality

Getting beautiful colours

More control over highlights and shadows

More creativity controlling the ambient light and flash exposure

Adding depth to an image

Making dramatic shadows

Creating mood and atmosphere

Bringing things to life with ‘pop’

No? Well perhaps you’ve got the wrong end of the stick with flash photography. A boring, ugly, flat blast of light onto your subject is not what flash photography is about.

To me, saying ‘I’m a natural light photographer’ (some people say ‘I chase the light’ to sound more poignant) translates into ‘I’m terrified of learning/using artificial lighting’. I never thought of using flash because I thought it was strictly, and only for the pros, and not hobbyists like me.

Think of it like this: if you are a photographer, you are to be a master of light manipulation. Be that natural ambient light or artificial light. Who doesn’t like natural lighting? It’s beautiful but it’s not always there, the clouds don’t part and the sun doesn’t come out when you pick your camera up.

You can either be a slave to light, or make light your slave, with a flash.. Ok, so not everyone will need to really learn flash photography if you’re a landscape or astral photographer. But for everything else? Why not?

Putting ‘natural light photographer’ in your social network bio screams ‘NOOB’. It doesn’t mean anything. We all have natural light at our disposal, there’s nothing unique about it.

Think: if you are limited to only the light you are given by nature, then your photographic vision is stunted. Indoors and want to take a picture of someone? Well, tough. The lighting above is really harsh and making seem deep panda eyes on your subject. So… what can you do? You could move your subject and ruin the composition (See, you’re a slave to the light here- you can’t have your subject exactly where you want), or, simply give a kiss of light from a flash to bring some life to your subject and make him look alive. Not like he’s missed a week of sleep.

What if your subject is a client and wants to have the seaside in the background whilst the sun is setting, you’ll either have a silhouette of your subject, or a totally blown out background. Your ambient light can only be measured for one thing, that’s where you would measure your flash output into the equation.

When you add artificial lighting into the equation, you have even more control for your photographic vision. You’re know controlling the ambient light and your flash output on the subject, or even the background.

What I don’t want this piece of writing to do is induce G.A.S into anyone or think they are inferior or incapable with whatever they have. As much as ‘gear doesn’t matter’ is true, it’s only true for a select few situations. We say it to be nice and make people feel positive about what they have.

If anything, I merely want to give you what might be a new idea for you to expand your photography with.

You shouldn’t think that you now need to spend hundreds and thousands on lighting or turn your attic into a studio, flash photography can be quite cheap to get into. A friend of mine said he wanted to sell off his 50mm f1.4 for a 50mm f1.2, for that extra bit of light.

That’s a hefty bit of cash going out the bank for a f1.2 lens, I suggested he just buys a cheap TTL flash for under one hundred pounds. He was stunned at the suggestion, it never crossed his mind. There’s more you can do with a junky lens/cheap body and good lighting than the best camera and lens with boring, ugly lighting. Light has to also be good quality.

Getting a wider aperture lens may be ‘letting in more light’ but is it improving the quality of light? If you were indoors and your subject had deep panda eyes from the harsh lighting above, that f1.2 won’t do anything except make the background more out of focus (and possibly most of your subject’s face too).

To start with flash, I bought a cheap manual Neewer TT560 for £30 and a cheap off camera cable off e-bay for around £10. My flash was stuck on top of my camera for a long time which was boring, when I bought a cable for off camera stuff, things really came alive. Wireless triggers can be found cheap too at around £20.

To top it off I bought a small softbox off e-bay for something like £3. The results? Everything looks much more interesting with flash, even the most basic of subjects. And, it cost me a lot less than a 25mm 0.95 Voigtlander or Panasonic GH5.

You can see what sort of things you can create below:

My favourite subjects to test out any new gear. This was taken in clear daylight, but we’ve got some ‘mood’ going on here because of the flash direction. Check the cheeky one in top right hand corner. The hens also have beautiful texture and definition on their feathers. Softbox used.

Even this scene incredibly dull and boring scene has a nice atmosphere due to the colours created from the flash. Softbox used.

See? My half eaten biscuit is even interesting to look at when the light is interesting. There’s texture and definition on it.

My father’s hands, holding the flash to the side helped bring out the textures and different tones in his hands. Higher points of contrast can create interest in an image.

This was taken in my bedroom which has awful lighting. I laid my pyjama bottoms on the bed as the ‘background’ and bounced the flash on the wall to the left. Ignore the thumb print on the lens barrel. (I edited in the text using Snapseed on my phone).

One last picture, see how beautiful the colours are on her, and the definition in her chest feathers. Even her eyes have some ‘life’ in them, this was taken in broad daylight, I wasn’t simply illuminating her, I was using the flash for the colour and definition. The ambient light is also nicely balanced. I could control the ambient, and flash exposure here. Softbox used.

Looking at the above few images, you can see that they are effectively all snapshots. Yet, they have some element of interest in them, be it the colour, atmosphere, or the shadows created. Without that, you wouldn’t even look once let alone twice. Now, if you can make your snapshots look a lot better by using one cheap manual flash, imagine when you start to get even better at your photography.

Flash will open up doors you never thought about, it’s like carrying the sun in your bag.