3 Creative Light Exercises for Flash (or Natural Light) | by Laura Froese
Do you ever feel straight-up bored with your camera? Do you miss the thrill of exploration and discovery when you first picked it up? I remember learning to shoot in manual, and then systemically picking off topics to master like shooting in golden hour, posing families, editing workshops, etc. Everything was new and exciting, and I could see the literal results of my learning in front of me.
Then I got a little more advanced, and I started to feel like the courses I was taking just didn’t seem as life changing, and they slowly became not as much worth the money to me. Rather than every page blowing my mind, I found myself sifting through materials trying to pick up tidbits that I didn’t already know.
Here me out - if you know how to use your flash off-camera, I am pretty sure we can re-ignite those fires of discovery and progress. If you’re already like, “Laura, I love you girl, but bye,” then I encourage you to just stick around and enjoy the pretty pictures and read the tips on how to do similar exercises with natural light underneath each of the following 3 creative exercises.
Basically it’s win-win; you either get inspired to start learning a new skill (advanced off-camera flash), or you get creatively inspired to go try out some trickier lighting situations with natural light. Either way, let’s see what we can do about that creative rut!
NOTE: Regarding the off-camera-flash, the caveat is that you already know how to fire your flash with a trigger when it’s not connected to your camera. If you don’t know that, then I have good news for you - we have so much learning to still do and you won’t be bored for a long time! My workshop, “Off-Camera Flash For Your Everyday” walks you through every step starting with turning your flash through mastering complete control of it!
However, I want to build on that foundation and talk about creating really FUN images. Are you ready?
CREATIVE EXERCISE 1: APPLIANCES
Put your flash inside an appliance! The benefit of using a flash here is that it’s bright enough to eliminate colour casts and you can have your camera settings be virtually whatever you want.
Natural light tip: Find an appliance that already has a light in it, and do this activity at night when that light will really show up against the darker room. If you have a wide lens (which is more forgiving for camera shake), you can tuck your elbows against your body for stability and do a really low shutter speed. If you have one that goes down to f/1.4, and embrace a slightly higher ISO (you can smooth it out in post), this is a fun activity to try! I used a tripod and a very low shutter speed for this image:
CREATIVE EXERCISE 2: SHADOW PLAY
Have you ever tried to backlight your subject without the sun? This can be tricky to do if you’re thinking of having pretty rim light, especially indoors, as indoor lighting just isn’t as powerful as the sun. If you’re using your flash, you can absolutely pull this off. However, what if we took another approach on backlighting entirely? What if you created your own shadow play using a blanket, a subject, and a lamp (or flash) behind? Tip - the closer your subject is to the blanket, the more defined the edges of their shadows will be.
Natural light tip: Try an LED large flashlight or lantern for a brighter light source.
CREATIVE EXERCISE 3: EMBRACE COLOUR
I encourage you to give yourself permission to use a light source that’s totally a whacky colour. Throw out perfect skin and embrace the creativity. I love putting a blue (or other coloured) gel on my flash:
Natural light tip: Using similar camera settings to the Appliance Exercise above, you can get really creative with coloured low light around your home. Take a look at your kids’ toys for inspiration or even keep an eye out for interesting backdrops when you are traveling around. A silhouette is a great way to embrace colour and not even have to think about what your subject’s skin tones are!
Flash, or no flash, I hope you find these tips inspirational and go see what magic you can create. (Youtube is a great resource for learning creative flash lighting, but I also have a workshop full of instruction and inspiration for taking those technical skills to the next level here as well!
