The ceiling will act as a huge reflector bouncing the light softly on your subject.
Bounce light off ceiling.
When you don t have the luxury of time to setup your hotshoe flash off cam and you re at an event shooting portraits you can always bounce its light off the ceiling.
To do the ceiling bounce just tilt your flash to the ceiling or at a 75 degrees angle and take the picture.
Bounce 1 off the ceiling.
The objective is to bounce light to soften it before it hits your subject.
Conversely this shot of a midnight harry potter fanatic was lit up into the ceiling behind me with the strobe set to 24mm.
Why bounce it and not point directly at my subject.
Allowing light to hit the ceiling and bounce downward creates a better effect than direct light from the front.
Bouncing a flash off a ceiling.
By default when i put a flash on my hot shoe i aim it straight up in the air so that i can bounce the light off of the ceiling.
Because generally speaking direct bare.
With a related article bounce flash outdoors with a reflector i showed some images from an event at a new york restaurant.
I intensely dislike direct hard on camera flash.
Bounce flash is when rather than firing your flashgun pointing directly at your subject you point it elsewhere typically up or at an angle bouncing off a wall or ceiling.
Just pop the flash and eyeball the hotspot on your bounce surface.
Note the fall off through the back of the frame.
A recurring topic on tangents is how to bounce flash in pretty extreme situations.
The above photo of the county sheriff had the flash set on 85mm bounced off of the ceiling near the subject.