For the past six weekends, I’ve been building myself a storage shed in my backyard. This past Labor Day I finally completed it and started loading it up with my junk stuff.

I had been taking photographs all along it’s progress and in looking back at all of the images, I thought I would share a technique I use to balance both the indoor and outdoor light.

This first image was early on in the framing stage.  You don’t think of this as an interior photograph, but if I had just exposed for the sky, the framing would have been underexposed, and you would have seen no detail in the framing at all.   Alternately, if I tried to properly expose the framing, the sky would be blown out.   Solution — balance the light with your flash!

Above is a photo I took (after moving items from the garage to the shed) on Labor Day using an on-camera flash with a diffuser. Obviously, it’s not a beautiful home interior photograph, but the technique is similar to what you would use.   I manually exposed for the window — which rendered a very dark picture with a small, well exposed, rectangular portion (the window).   I then fired up the flash and set no FEC, leaving it at +0.   The flash did all the thinking for exposure of the inside of the shed, leaving the well exposed window!

Next time you are photographing a kids party, family gathering or real estate indoors with a window or open door in your background — take a moment to expose for the bright outside light, use your flash (or several flashes for real estate photography) and then fire away.  Your pictures will look great without a big white, blown out window — but rather the scene as your eyes see it.

If you are a sports photographer and frequently shoot high school night games of football, soccer, or lacrosse, you have probably experienced poor lighting.  Some of the newer fields have decent lighting, but a majority of the ones I visit are marginal at best.

Prior to Bel Air High School being remodeled, if I shot a game without flash on the old football field, I would usually come away disappointed with my results.  The light reading on that field was ISO 3200 f/2.8 1/250 on the best lit areas of the field. The team wears dark blue uniforms and shots from the endzone and sideline would be horrible, unless you shot at 1/60.

If you shoot at night with a flash sitting on-camera, you will end up with a majority of your subjects with red eye or ghost (white) eye.  Pupils are dilated and the light from your flash is so close to the lens axis that red eye is unavoidable in that situation.   To use flash without getting red eye, the flash needs to be distanced from the lens axis.  One way would be to put the flash up high above your camera.  Well, in doing that, you being nimble and having the ability to move up and down the sidelines quickly is probably hindered.  What I do is put my flash below my camera. This allows me to move up/down the sidelines pretty much the same way I would without flash. The flash below keeps the weight low to the ground and doesn’t affect my shooting ability.

I setup my monopod with an L-bracket attached with a hose clamp (purchase at any hardware store) about 15″-18″ below the camera. I mount my 580EX upside down with the camera still able to talk to the flash with an off-shoe cord.  I shoot football with my Sigma 120-300 f/2.8 DG at ISO 1600; f/3.5; 1/250 with the flash on E-TTL -2/3.   In doing this, the ghost-eyes are eliminated completely, and red-eye will only be seen in a small percentage of shots.   What the flash does is pops the color and lights up inside the helmet to see eyes and faces –  for that’s what the mom’s really want to see!  The downside to having the flash below the camera is that it creates some funky shadows, for the light is coming from below, but it really lights up underneath the helmet and will produce many more good images than without flash.

My setup isn’t pretty, but it works.  You too can create this setup for little money.

#1: Hose clamp and L-bracket placed onto monopod. Tape to protect the monopod.  I suggest using gaffers tape — I used blue duct tape, DOH!  Washers used because the thin bracket causes the bolt to bottom out before getting tight.

#2: Canon 580EX flash attached upside down.

#3: What the players see. (My father’s arm typically isn’t attached though)

#4: Side view of setup.

Another alternative to the hose clamp and L-bracket is to attach a super-clamp to your monopod and use a lightstand bracket to attach your flash to the superclamp. The super-clamp method will add more weight to your monopod. If that isn’t an issue for you, that method is very simple to setup.

Below are some samples of what this setup can do.