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Answer:
I am not exactly sure what you mean by "leaving exactly half the
picture shadowed and the other half perfect". It sounds as though you
would get this result if you were taking a vertical shot and having the flash
on the camera and bouncing it towards the ceiling. This would give you less
angle coverage from the flash and may account for the shadow. Without seeing
the pictures though it is almost impossible to tell what went wrong.
There are basically two techniques that you can you to photograph people at a
party, wedding or conventions that will make the pictures look much better
than just snapshots of them. What you DON'T want to do is have the flash
sitting in the camera's hot shoe and directly facing your subjects. This will
give you that snapshot quality to your pictures, it's fine in a pinch, but I
don't think you will get many referrals to other clients.
The technical reason that you don't want to use this technique, is that it
creates harsh shadows and very bright specular highlights without any soft
gradation between the two. What you want to achieve is a soft lighting
effect. This is accomplished by either bouncing the light off a surface
before it reaches your subject or by moving the flash off the camera and
diffusing the light.
The bounce technique is the most common and practical. The mistake that most
people make is that they leave the flash in the hot shoe of the camera. This
works OK for horizontal shots but is terrible for verticals. What I use is a
stroboframe arm; the flash sits on top part of the arm while the camera sits
on the bottom part. If you want to take a vertical shot then all you do just
move the arm holding the flash so that it is back on top again (rather on the
side of the camera). You can bounce the flash off the ceiling, providing they
are normal height ceilings. If you are in a room, church or whatever in which
the ceiling height is very tall then you will need to bounce the light right
at the flash. This is a technique used by News photographers all of the time,
cut out a white piece of card board 12" x 12" then trim one side of
the card board to the exact width of your flash. Attach this end to your
flash using elastic bands, you can now use this "bounce card"
instead of a ceiling. Notice that I said a white card board, this is because
what ever the colour is that you are bouncing the light off of that light
will pick up that colour. In other words if you bounce the light off a blue
card or ceiling, the people will be illuminated by blue light and they will
look blue.
The other technique is to create soft light is by modifying the light at the
flash. This is achieved by placing the flash in a small soft box. The problem
with this technique is that you need an assistant to hold and position the
soft box, and soft boxes are very expensive. So I won't go into the details
of this technique.
Hope this more or less answers your question, if you need more information
just ask!
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