Common misconception: Using the built-in flash always results in awful pictures. Case in point:
A sexy picture of me using built-in flash
Alright, I know you can’t resist that lovable face, but let’s be brutally honest – this picture sucks. I s’pose I could have chosen a picture with better composition, or one that was in focus, or without such a doofy look on my face, but I’m trying to prove a point here – on-camera flash often achieves terrible results. Many people think it ALWAYS achieves terrible results. I beg to differ:
Slightly more flattering on-camera flash
Same photo shoot, taken approximately 10 minutes apart. Much better, no? Ok, so I admit – there’s more going on here than just the lighting. The second picture is a completely different composition, and I actually managed to look half decent. It’s probably the only shot in the entire series where I don’t look mildly retarded.
But I digress, I’m not here to talk about my modeling capabilities, I’m here to talk about being creative. Let me give you some background – I wanted a profile picture for this blog. For a variety of reasons I don’t want to use any of my stocked photos, so I decided to do some self-portrait work. I don’t actually own an external flash, I always borrow my roommate’s when I need one. Problem is – he’s out of town with all of his camera equipment.
I have motivation to do this photo shoot RIGHT NOW but no proper flash equipment. The solution?
A hair brush.
Specifically, a hairbrush Lufthansa gave me when they lost my luggage, two or three years ago. Also a rubber band and an extra Compat Flash card… Oh, and a white wall.
Bounce that Flash, Lufhansa hair brush!
First – I apologize for this crappy photo. Instead of using a complex mirror setup to have the camera take a picture of itself (I did think about doing that) I just used my cell phone camera, which is awful, at best, but it gets the job done.
The setup:
The hairbrush has a mirror in the handle. It is also a folding brush, so I used the rubber band to attach it to the pop-up flash on my camera, then angled the handle approximately 45 degrees. The compact flash card just adds a little more support to keep it propped up properly. Bounce that flash on a white wall, and voila! Studio finish lighting!
Note: I am holding a white reflector behind the camera in this shot, but I didn’t use it for my portrait photo as I had a nice white wall to bounce off of. Also it’s worth noting that I turned the flash exposure up to +2, the highest my built-in flash will go.
I love creative solutions to absolutely unnecessary problems. ;-)
Cheers!
-Martin
