I have to admit something to all of you. I don’t have a flash. I haven’t owned one in three years. I haven’t missed one in five years. I don’t expect I will ever own one or miss one again. Why? Because I find the combination of high ISO photography and the tricks and power of Lightroom have made flash unnecessary. It also helps to be wise and clever enough to find situations to photograph that don’t need flash. Let me explain.

Most of my photography these days has been confined to an old dairy farm. (My book on the farm will be coming out in June) This means that I have been photographing inside a lot in pretty dark places. My results have been spectacular and I have never, ever used a flash. The trick is to use the highest viable ISO (the highest without too much noise) and find a situation with nice light. And then just fire away!

This is a photo of Hugh, the 93 year old farmer. Notice the nice light on his face and the lack of shadows. This is because I waited to take his picture in a location where there was light bouncing off the floor of the barn on to his face. This is why there are no shadows under his hat. There is no flash that I know of that will be able to take this shot as easily as I did without flash.

The little calf was lying in the darkest part of the barn. I didn’t have the option of using flash because I didn’t want to disturb the calf or the cows immediately to my side. So I waited for just a touch of light coming from a side window and with my ISO set at 1600 took this picture. I was also hand-holding my camera. How is that for breaking all the rules and still getting a nice shot?

With Lightroom flash has become unnecessary because the program allows very precise selective lightening of areas. This effect is the same as using the flash in fill mode. Think about it- isn’t fill flash the same as throwing light into a dark area? So if you can selective lighten an area of your photograph in Lightroom why use fill flash? Got me!

This is the time of the year when our thoughts turn to the photographic possibilities of winter. For me that meant getting pictures that looked like a winter wonderland, whatever that meant. But it took me awhile to figure out why some of my pictures looked wintery yet others looked dull and, dare I say, depressing. It wasn’t the quality of light or the subject, they were the same in the good winter photos as they were in the not so good winter photos. And it wasn’t how much or how new the snow was in the photo. Piles of snow sometimes looked dreadful and at other times they looked like a winter wonderland. I wanted the wonderland.

To take a photo that looks like a winter wonderland (in other words, to take a marketable winter photo) there has to be snow on the trees. If there are no trees than there has to be snow on whatever is rising above the ground- grass, bushes, graves, etc. If there is only snow on the ground, no matter how pretty the light, the picture will lack that wonderland feeling.

So when is the best time to get snowy trees? Up north it is during the first snowfall when the trees are still warm; warm branches are stickier than the cold branches of mid-winter. Farther south it is during a storm that starts out raining and then finishes snowing; wet branches are stickier than dry ones. If you go out right after the storm has cleared or is clearing there will be lots of snow on all the branches and you will have a winter wonderland to photograph. If you wait, the wind will pick up and knock all the snow off and you’ll be left with a  ho-hum scene.