There certainly plenty of good reasons to use the flash on your camera – to ensure you have enough light, to make sure the light is pointed at the front of your subject, to stop motion, etc. However, I recommend experimenting with having the flash turned off. The coolest thing about shooting sans-flash is that you get to see exactly the way the scene looks with existing light – which means you can be deliberate about your composition.
Most point-and-shoot digital cameras have a flash off setting under “menu.” It looks like a little lightning bolt with a buster sign through it. Another adjustment you might want to make while trying this setting, is manually selecting the white balance. You can identify the white balance options because they’ll usually look like a sunshine, a cloud, a lightbulb, a shadow on the side of a house, etc. Just select the white balance that most accurately depicts the kind of light in which you are shooting. One other tip: hold your breath while you’re shooting, and hold the camera as steady as you can – shooting without flash can require longer exposures, so unless you’re still as you can be, they’ll be blurry (which could also be cool! See tip #4.)
Alternately, if you find you can’t break the flash habit, cut a little piece of a dryer sheet and tape it over your camera’s flash. This emulates “diffusion,” the filter movie-makers use to soften the lights they point at starlets.
Click here for tip #4, “I meant to do that.”
For more, please check out Sarah Sloboda’s Photo Teleseminar for Moms.
