Look at me, yesterday, taking a picture of the flower-girl at Halyna and Vitali’s wedding in Toronto:

You see that in spite of it being bright daylight (1pm on a sunny summer day), I have my flash aimed at the girl. And you see I am getting down to child level. And here is that picture, taken the very same second:

The look is defined by me:

• Underexposing the picture a little; the ambient part, that is, to bring out the colour in the sky. Look at the pavement to see how much darker I made my ambient (about two stops).
• Using a wide angle lens (16-35 on a full frame camera).
• Getting down to the ground.
• Using the rule of thirds.

Flash outdoors, then. But because I used the flash to enable me to darken the ambient by a couple of stops, it is more than fill flash.

Indoors, on the other hand, I used no flash yesterday, not at all, in the house or church. Unlike me, but the results were good:

Instead, I used a higher ISO and a prime lens, almost wide open (like at f/2 – f/2.8). It’s all what’s needed: no dogma!