Bounce that flash! (even if the ceiling isn't white)

isn't it great when you are shooting an event and you walk into the venue and it has white/light colored walls and ceilings? You can bounce your flash and light is all soft and directional. Yay!

But what if the walls/ceilings are black or dark grey or dark wood?

PRO-TIP: if the walls/ceilings are sufficiently dark then bounce flash will still work!

What I mean by "sufficiently dark" is is that the surface doesn't have significant cast color to it. For example painted black walls inside a club will bounce back neutral light...just not as efficiently. Also very dark stained/colored wood will bounce neutral-ish light as well though you may have to slightly cool it down or take out a touch of red during processing. But that reddish cherry wood? Forget about it. Any shade of grey works as well..what you are trying to avoid is incorrectable color cast! Your flash may have to work harder in these situations as grey/black surfaces don't reflect well...but it will work.

I recently shot company party at nice restaurant that was dimly lit and had dark wood everywhere and grey/black ceilings. Some of the walls were creamy colored though. See below:



But bounce still worked:



I did have to cool the light by 200 Kelvin or so in post to correct the tungsten ambient and the slight dark brown wall color cast but it still looked very acceptable.

Here is some shots from club (a while ago) that had dark grey walls and black ceilings with very low ambient. I could here my flash "popping" very loudly to try and keep up but the the light was gorgeous. In fact the dark surfaces and dim ambient really directionalized the light because light wasn't flying everywhere.





So next time you encounter dark surfaces and you are trying to bounce...take heart! It can work:barb