Dear Flash...

"Flash is usefull, but it can also pollute a photo. Your job as a photographer is to capture the vision of your subject that cannot be capture by a normal point of view. Some of the best photographers use no flash at all, but instead choose to use a better light gathering lens. They choose to have linear lighting sources rather than the slap in your face power of the flash. I just wish this group would encourage the way of thinking of denying the use of flash and working on creating photos using linear or natural lighting. You can rip on me all you want haters, but I find this whole group just a bit flash crazy."

The statement above was recently made on the discussion board of one of the on-line photographic communities that I participate in. I find that telling others how to do their art to be rather offensive; which makes me want to use this post to address the several points that the author of that comment implies which I believe to be complete poppycock. I won't though. Instead, I'm just going to use this post to spread some love for the use of flash.

More images from this volume of work is available on my Flickr page.

These are just some of my favorite images that I've taken over the past year where I used my lovely Vivitar 285 flash. I believe with 100% certainty that purchasing a faster lens and attempting to create these images without using the flash as the original commenter tries to tell us to do would have resulted in nothing less than complete failure. So to show my appreciation for flash units worldwide, I'm writing the following open letter.

Dear Flash,

    I love you.

Sincerly,
K. Praslowicz

As an added bonus for this post, I've put together a strobist diagram illustrating the complex Bruce Gilden inspired flash set-up that I used while taking all of these photos. I hope it comes in handy for any other flash lovers who stumble across this post.