Mix Flash and Ambient Light To Create Stunning Portraits

Attention all you "natural light" photographers, now is the time to expand your photographic skill set by adding flash photography to your tool kit.

It's not difficult. With a few rounds of experimentation your photography will elevate itself to new levels and your work will stand out. These photography lighting tips will work for all genres of photography - wedding photography, portrait photography, senior photography, fashion photography, boudoir photography and more.

In this step-by-step flash lighting tutorial I will explain techniques like dragging the shutter and how you can use that technique to allow more ambient light into your portraits and add more depth to any shot.

#salcincotta #lightingtutorial #westcott

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[Marcelo_Salup]

Great lesson. This is one of the points of contention with many beginners who don't realize that the key to mixing ambient and flash is the shutter speed. The speed limit analogy is very good and I'm stealing it.

[Keith]

Adding flash light to ambient is how you make your images stand above the rest. Learn this with film while doing weddings and these are the images that sold me to new brides.

[barkyvonschnauzer]

Great shots. In just a few moments I have learnt more than I have watching an hour video. Thanks Sal.

[frxk]

Damn that's so Gothic looking model

[hawg]

Great video Sal, loved her dark Goth makeup that blends with her dark outfit :-)

[themenadarre]

I love this ! What power was your light on?

[kennyconfidence]

Nice one, omo you have such a steady hand to be shooting at 1/50 without getting blurry shots

[VGarden]

The best tips and trick I've ever learnt, so I liked and saved this videos for my photography {shutter speed is the key}! Thank You For Sharing!

[cecilemuntu]

Thank you Sir 😊 I've learned a lot ❤

[ronald]

GREAT video
You can see also increase the ISO, why did you chose the shutter speed lowering instead of the ISO?

[saucelove]

Lauren has amazing eyes. I hope to attend shutter fest next year, and I can meet you.

[mast]

That analogy was great. It will be good if a similar analogy can be given for how long lenses bring the background in.

[barrymcdonald]

Beautiful shots. Curious what power setting you had your strobe set to?

[nicklisboayt]

Dear Sal, I want to focus more on dramatic portraits. I already have my ND filter and would like your opinion. Can I do things like in your video, and also more dramatic on brighter days, with just my speedlight, or will I certainly need to buy something stronger like an AD200, for example. Could you help me? Thank you very much!

[KASMUSIK]

I wish you put your power setting on flash

[malthus]

You know this guy just loves some pasta fazool

[SusanneGeert]

Thanks for this great video! I am a bit confused after seeing another video recently: The photographer there explained that even though the flash freezes the motion on the subject you still can't use too slow/low shutter speeds since there can be created blur (as I remember he said from the ambient light). So, is that because it's so dark that you can photograph at shutter speeds of 1/60 and 1/20 sec. (and would you not ba able to to this is daylight even if you wanted to create a more dramatic look with less ambient light and more flash light)? Thanks a lot in advance and thanks for all your great and super helpful content 🫶

[DmitryBrodsky]

Great video. I understand the flash will still hit your model at fast speed and freeze her. However, is camera shake still an issue under these conditions?

[cuongnguyentan]

Thank you sir. Im stucking at where my background being very dark. With this method i may get more light for the background. But i still dont know why you can stay 1/20 without blurry

[Ibcz]

Good.. but if 1/60 is still to much and we do not want to close aperture? Nd filter or hss?