Here is my presentation when I was invited as one of the speakers during the PHPHOTO EB and PHPHOTO website launch last June 19, 2010 held during the 15th Graphic Expo 2010 held at SMX Convention center.

Good day PHPHOTO, I would like to talk about strobe misconceptions, in hopes of making you all want to use your flash more often. The very first misconception is people presume that photos shot with a strobe will make it look unnatural. Though by proper use, an image can still look natural even when you use a strobe. Here is an example, where I used a flash to the model’s left to substitute where the Sun would have lit the model.

I can also use a flash to fill in shadows, the flash will help bring out details on the dark areas without making it look unnatural.

I can also use a flash to replicate an outdoor scene, this photo was in-fact shot indoors, I had to add lights to the background to help make the scene.

Another misconception people have, is that you can control a flash with your shutter speed. That’s totally false, because a flash can only be controlled with the aperture, here you can see as I change the shutter speed, only the ambient scene is changed and not the exposure of the flash on the model.

Since the shutter speed doesn’t affect your flash exposure, you can increase the speed to underexpose the ambient light to achieve a bluer sky.

Which means you can turn day into night by this underexposure technique. Just making sure that you use your flash on your subject so that the subject is still well lit.

You can also turn night into day, but this time slowing down the shutter speed to gather enough light left in the ambient scene, just like this photo that was taken close to 7:00 PM

Since a flash will always fire at a high speed, it will stop motion and freeze your subject.

With means you can intentionally move your camera during a long exposure to create unique light trails and still keep your subject sharp due to the freezing action of the flash.

You can also keep your camera steady with a tripod and move any continuous lights during a long exposure to create the light pattern.

People seems to expect that when you use a flash it should make the subject brighly lit. Well lit doesn’t always mean perfectly exposure. Here are some examples of underexposed shot that still look right.

Here is another example of an intentional dark shot. So remember when you use a flash it doesn’t have to always make everythng bright.

Well lit can also mean overexposure, in this case I wanted to overexpose the background so that the food stands over the background.

In these two examples I use overexposure to add some glow to the faces of my models.

When using a flash, it doesn’t mean you have to eliminate shadows, which are very critical to a photograph. In can help add drama to a photo.

Shadows help bring out texture to your subjects, specialy when you shoot food and products.

No shadows, means flat photo, thus no texture.

Shadows help show form, to highlight curves.

If you still feel you are in the dark, feel free to visit my website and enroll in my lighting seminar.