Shirt Bounce Flash

When shooting outdoors, there are two lighting forces at work: sun and shadow, and the brighter sunlight, the deeper the shadows. While shadows are necessary to give our photographs the suggestion the three dimensionality, they are sometimes too dark to reveal important details. Sure, you could adjust the exposure to favor the shadow areas, but you'll the blow out your highlights. There are two possible solutions: Use a fill board to bounce sunlight into the shadows, or use a flash.

Fill boards are basically reflectors that can vary in reflectivity from a mirror to a simple piece of neutral-colored cardboard. The mirror, the epitome of reflectivity, could work, but your subject would find it nearly impossible to avoid squinting. A piece of gray cardboard would be much easier on your subject's eyes, but the light bouncing from it might not be enough for your purposes. Reflectors can be difficult to handle when your working by yourself. The leaves us with flash.

Since I was already using my flash remotely, I was free to position it anywhere I wished. Since I was wearing a beige t-shirt, I decided to set the output to full and bounce it off myself. This was a very trial-and-error affair, and I did it primarily to see the results. I also used a wide angle lens to reduce the flash to t-shirt to subject distance, and started with the flash set to 1/2 power. The best of the sequence was the shot at the top of the post. The lighting favored the top half of the frame, which in this case was acceptable because the lower half doesn't carry much visual content.

This second photo shows some pitfalls of the shirt-bounce technique. In this shot, the light is more concentrated at the lower half of the frame. You can see how prominent the knuckles are in this shot. The second problem is that the bounced-flash will produce shadows, and in this case, you can see them above my subject's closed fist and on his beard. It's pretty clear the light is coming from below the waist. I'm sure the viewer will find this shadows distracting, just as i do. The subject's pose in the first shot, hands positioned close to the body, tends to conceal them.

I will probably continue to experiment with the technique, but will only use it when no other fill options are available. Luckily for me, something better can usually be improvised, but when if you have nothing other than a beige t-shirt, this just might give you an acceptable image.