Thanks a lot for reading my article and writing a comment.

I really appreciate your opinion and feel sorry only because you have not addressed your points to real pros e.g. on strobist.com.

I am indeed an amateur. I am quite far from expressing emotions with my images.

I am at the beginning of my journey into the world of photography and these days I learn about lighting. Hence I’m a strobist. And since I am not in the financial league of being able to purchase studio strobes I play around with my speedlights and try to use “more brain” to achieve “better light”. (An other reason why I’m a strobist )

I agree with that lighting – as a tool – should not be overused and it’s affects should rather be invisible for the viewers. Please let me learn, practice and share my results to get feedback from the community and improve my skills.

Best regards,
photonovice

You are killing your photography with this technofetisch you all have for your speedlights. I have also recently bought a couple speedlights, to supplement my real strobe setup, but in the past I’ve shot many images without any flashes or modifiers at all. You can do a lot of stuff by working with the surrounding walls, available light etc. And not as a compromise, but as a huge contributing factor to MOOD. Emotions.

Essentially, what I’m getting at is that you “strobist” people seem to have no real vision or mission with your photography. A belly dancer lit and posed like seen here (and by Honl as well on Strobist.com and YouTube) is just plain… plain… Boring and plain. And the lighting is way too pronounced to be interesting.

I’m not writing this to diss anyone, but to suggest some direction for your photography. Being one in a million “strobists” will probably never get your stuff in a gallery, or change the world, or make you famous like famed Chase Jarvis. The difference? He has vision. And a lot of gear, but I assume he’s not obsessing with it. It’s just tools.

If you listen to, or read, The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield, you will note that being a strobist equals being an amateur. The pro does not worship his equipment.

Best cure? Buy some Rotovision or AVA books on pro lighting. With and without flash. Avalable light included. Learn to shoot and work with what you have. 3-point lighting is not the holy grail. It’s boring and dated. Hair light? Fill light? Not the stuff that made Terry Richardson, Avedon, Helmut Newton, etc…

Learn to shoot. Lighting can’t hide boredom! Not even poor lighting. Or perfect lighting.

Thank you very much for your comment. Your suggestions are invaluable.

A suggestion wrt Lesson #6. If I may suggest a third option: Set your flash units using a hand-held “flash” light meter.

I shoot in (total) manual mode, using such a meter. Here’s a quick How-to for a shoot that uses two strobe lights, one main (about 30 degrees or so to the side), and one fill light (just about directly behind the camera).

After positioning your lights before hand, adjust their outputs by using a hand-held flash meter postioned where your model will stand. Example: to shoot a model at f 5.6, set up your main light and adjust the flash output to f 5.6, according to the flash output reading of the meter. Then adjust the fill light to give a meter reading of about f 4. (About 1.5 stops lower.) Then test shoot both strobes together, adjusting the main strobe output until my meter returns an overall reading of 5.6.

Once you see your final results you can make adjustments according to your liking. But something like this should give very consistent results. And done correctly, you shouldn’t have to worry about compensating with camera settings.