Photography is a very tricky medium when it comes to art.  People often think it’s easy to take a photo, just point and shoot the camera; but they don’t realize it’s much more complicated than that.  Photography is especially tough indoors, because you are dealing with a problem that plagues all  photographers out there… the dreaded low, incandescent light.

Sometimes, you can get away with using a timed exposure which is where you would set your camera on a tri-pod and accurately white balance it for the yellow lighting it gives you.  Sometimes, however, where portraits are concerned, you don’t want that golden, ambient light but would rather have  your subject evenly lit. Sometimes your subject is moving, like at a wedding where low light will cause an acid trip effect.  The most logical solution is to use your flash.  

When you use your flash for any photo, you may get unwanted or unattractive outputs.  For example, you are in a low lit room with yellow, incandescent lights dimmed to half their power which, in turn, gives off an orange or yellow color.  In addition, people are dancing so the light is too low for a time release exposure.  Flash is your only option.  There are two things you may see with your flash.  

1. You take the photo farther away and realize there’s a half circle effect around the subject.  The subjects seem to have this yellow tint on them making them appear jaundice.  The whole photo has a “rising or setting sun” effect which is quite ugly.
2. Your subject is over exposed, you have “red eye,” and there are shadows around the subject.

There are solutions to this matter.  When using flash it is best to get an external flash with a swivel head.  The reason for this is simple.  You can angle the flash to bounce off a ceiling, a corner of a room or just soften the effects of the flash by diverting the path.  This will eliminate many of the harsh shadows, but you may still find some in your picture.  This will also help avoid over exposures as it evenly distributes the light.  When you bounce your flash, you evenly distribute the light and can create a 3D effect.

If you must take a photo farther away, you will still want to take the lowest possible setting so it doesn’t let too much light in, but make sure it doesn’t under expose the photo either.  Get as close as you can, because that will help eliminate the circular pattern on the wall, but bouncing the light will help to evenly distribute the light across the projected path.

You may also run into some other fun obstacles.  Those would be ”red eye” and bad color.  When using flash you must take into consideration, flash is a whitish-blue hue similar to a fluorescent bulb.  The yellow color comes from an incandescent bulb that actually acts like a fire.  It’s a warmer effect.  The trick is to balance it with both colors in mind.  Test your settings out and tweak when necessary.  Some digital cameras allow you to use factory white balancing settings, or to customize.  Some allow you to add the CMYK colors to help balance the color to reference the “true color” of the subject.  White balancing is very important for the true feel of the photo.  Sure you can use Photoshop to correct it, but it will never be the real color of the room.  It is best to get it right the first time with your camera or as close to perfect as you can get it. 

“Red eye” is a common occurrence that happens with the flash.  It happens when an object is under or over exposed.  The only “true” way to correct this is to evenly distribute the light, don’t shoot face on when using the flash and turn your “red eye” setting on.  Sometimes you can still do all those steps and still have “red eye,” but that’s just the nature of the eye and remember the eye is made up of many lenses that reflect.  It is a proven fact that some people will get “red eye” in the bright daylight sun, in the darkest of rooms or where ever they take a photo.  This could be a sign of anemia, lack of iron in the blood that can cause a high “red eye” rate.  Animals will always have spots in their eyes unless they are in an evenly lit area which is due to their eye structure and color.  One way to avoid this is to not shoot straight on with the flash.

Remember, flash does not come out in a box shape that fills the room.  Flash comes out circular, in a cone like fashion.  As the flash reaches farther and farther, the greater the circle and that is why you tend to have a circular pattern of flash when you are farther away from your subject.  Once the flash hits an object in its path, it returns to the camera in the same cone like fashion except the point of the cone is facing the object it bounced off.  That is why you get the shadow.

Flash is not easy to use because you have to know how to manipulate light  in order to get that beautiful photo successfully.  Sure, cameras are almost idiot proof nowadays, but they will forever have the problems I stated above without proper anticipation.  However,  they won’t be as prevalent with a self adjusting camera function to take the know how out.