I often get questions like this...

Why do my pictures look like the background is so dark? How can I take a better picture of my child indoors?

You know, like this...


The trick is a technique called dragging your shutter. Basically, you set your camera settings to properly expose the background and let your flash take care of your subject...



If I did not use my flash, that image would have shown a dark subject, hidden in the shadow as the lamp is behind him. But that little bit of pop from my flash lit him up perfectly to to create a more natural looking image.

I bounced my flash behind me where the ceiling meets the wall to create a huge softbox type of light in the room. Kind of like turning my wall/ceiling into a big light. This will light up your room and give you all the light you need. The very top image in this post, I had the flash aimed directly at my subject and so the area behind him did not get illuminated properly. This DIY softbox effect lights up the entire room and does the job nicely.

For a little more depth to your image, you can bounce it off the wall to your side as well as sligthly behind you and create a softbox off to your side that illuminates the room well and gives a little dimension to your subject by creating very faint/soft shadows...



Much nicer, don't you think? :)