La Casita: Flash no-no's and yes yes's

{bounce flash testing}

I finally had the privilege of buying a much wanted purchase (for say, a year now) last Sunday. It was a Canon Speedlite 580exII flash. If this sounds confusing, don't let it! My attempt at keeping my old dinosaur flash, which served it's purpose back in the day but does not work well with dSLRs, has passed. I am now prepping my 35mm EOS A2, Sunpak 622 flash and vertical grip for sale. I really enjoyed the Sunpak, but think old school news reporter. I had to lug this monster thing around. It makes me laugh when I hear some report that their decisions on cameras are based on the weight of the camera and ease of use. Once you lug one of those flashes around, it puts the flash aspect into perspective. I am happy to lug my camera around, but not with an additional five pounds of flash attached to it, which is why I am super excited to finally have my new flash. I was hoping to use this past week to test out the flash (and new 50mm 1.4 lens), but illness won and so I'm going to have to make the best with what I know to get the results I want. For what? Well, Paige's birthday is on Monday. My hope was to test out a few things to minimize the amount of time we spend on a 'shoot'. But, the more I think about it, the more I realize I'll be just fine. This girl is made to pose! She can find the camera and work it! So, what are a few of the things I've learned about flash photography? Well, it's not as intimidating as I once thought. After spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on professional lighting equipment and then selling it, I decided you can essentially achieve the same effect with a little creativity and ingenuity. If I choose to do this for pay, I'm going to need to learn how to go low cost so I can spend the money on things you can't change...like lenses...or another camera body...ya know, stuff like that. Here are a few pictures I took using the new flash. Oh, and sorry for the misnomer. I don't have any 'no-no's' for this post, lol.