Conquer your small flash and create extraordinary portraits!
Roberto Valenzuela is a photographer, author, and instructor who has an unmatched talent for helping others conquer photography’s most challenging topics in their pursuit of becoming better photographers. Over the past decade, he has written numerous bestselling books that have empowered readers around the world to break through barriers and improve their craft.
Here, in The Flash Advantage, for the first time Roberto dedicates an entire book to the subject of using small, portable flash to create powerful, creative, and extraordinary portraits. Flash photography has always been daunting for many photographers. Without a system for thinking about and working with flash, you can easily end up feeling stuck, or you end up flailing—randomly changing settings, positions, and modifiers—and hoping for the best. It’s not surprising that this leads to failure and frustration.
In this book, Roberto teaches you two systems he created, which will allow you to finally conquer your flash and create photographs that fulfill your intention and vision. Roberto calls these the FACES and NAME systems. The FACES system gives you a framework for thinking about how you want or need to use flash in a particular scene:
• Fix: Do you need to fix a low light problem or an unwanted color cast?
• Add: Do you need to add more light to boost or enhance the available light or create separation?
• Create: Are you creating all of the light in the scene to achieve a certain mood?
• Effects: Are you using flash for creative visual effect?
• Subtract: Do you need to subtract light from the scene?
Once you’ve found your purpose for the light, the NAME system provides an essential workflow for working through the execution of your flash photography in a methodical way so that you get consistent results:
• Number: How many flashes do you need?
• Angle: Where does the flash need to be positioned?
• Modifier: How do you need to modify the flash?
• Energy: What power does the flash need to be?
These two systems provide the core framework for the book. Along the way, Roberto explains all the features of flash and flash photography that you need to know: TTL, manual, 1st and 2nd curtain sync, channels, groups, flash exposure bracketing, ratios, stroboscopic flash, flags, using gels, and using modifiers such as grids, softboxes, umbrellas, and snoots. With this technical knowledge, combined with the FACES and NAME systems, you’ll have everything you need to know to finally conquer your flash...and make the kind of portrait photographs you’ve always wanted to create.
