Sometimes On-Camera flash works

I do a lot of portraits for articles in different magazines, mostly nothing fancy. But I get to meet interesting people and go to interesting places. And very often, I try really hard to make the photos stand out, and not just fill the blank spaces on the pages.

Sometimes I can control the time and place for the photo shoot, a little bit at least, but most of the times, I will have to make do with what I get, the where and when. For this assignment, the magazine needed some portraits of Malin on a short notice, and the only time we both were free was in the middle of rush hour one dark winter night in Stockholm, just after sunset.

Instead of thinking too much of how I would like to set this up, I just brought my D700, a 50 mm lens and a SB-800 flash.

Thinking back on that night, I could have done so many other things, but it is very freeing sometimes to keep it simple.

Setting the aperture to f/2.8 and reduce the power a bit on the SB-800, I could get a little bit of the little available light left to mix with the on-camera flash (the photo above has a little help from a store and its spotlights), but mostly I left it to the iTTL to make the exposures correct.

I use on-camera flash very little, but it has it’s charm in a way, I think. It makes the pictures look very real, because you have seen so many like these. Old photo albums are full of portraits lit like this.

Of course, I could have done so much more, but on a windy night, cold and dark, past dinner time, it felt good not to complicate things. Besides, she didn’t have much time, and keeping someone just because your light setup on a street corner doesn’t work as well as you thought is not the funniest thing in the world.

I wasn’t unhappy with the resulting portraits I delivered, I just felt that I could have done something more advanced (even if I didn’t really have the time).

But when I saw the article and how they had used one of the portraits I sent, it looked like it should, in some way. There is an interview and there is a portrait of her in front of a door to a subway station. Nothing fancy, as I said, and many times I think that makes for the best portraits.

I can’t count how many times I have delivered portraits that looks great, if maybe a little artistic and staged, together with the more ordinary ones, and my clients almost always uses the ordinary ones. I don’t know exactly why, maybe because the feel more real, maybe? Or they might fit in better in the layout?

What is the lesson to me this time? I think it is that sometimes it is better not to complicate things too much, especially when there is not much time. Better to focus on contact and choosing the right spot. Even if it forces you to use on-camera flash and take really ordinary photos.