Flash!

Here’s a flash with a small 8″ Honl softbox:

Sometimes, bouncing is not the solution. For a snap like this, you would:

1. Decide on the desired brightness for the background
2. Set your aperture, shutter and ISO accordingly
3. Turn on your off-camera TTL flash
4. Hold it “where the umbrella would be”
5. Click.

The key here is to use an off-camera flash – even in a simple snap of your child, this would lead to a better simple snap.

Here’s one with direct unmodified on-camera flash, of me and the same son smoking a cigar in Amsterdam (better than the alternative):

And sometimes you just use open shade only, as in this image of my other son in front of Café Hoppe in Amsterdam:

The important thing is to always think of light – “what do I need”.