Portrait Photography Competition: Shoot with Flash and Phone

Photographers can get a bit carried away by gear envy when they see others with tons of expensive camera gear, lighting equipment, and modifiers. It's also easy to say you can't be creative because you don't have access to a certain light or equipment.

But often, this mindset has nothing to do with hardware and is actually just a justification for staying in your comfort zone. In the spirit of leaving that comfort zone, you can achieve creative fashion looks with just a flash and an iPhone.

Everything is a Source of Light

It's quite common to believe that photographers need specialized flashes to maximize light usage, and the more expensive these lights are, the better the quality.

The truth is, it's incredibly ignorant to say that one particular brand of light is special or better than another. In fact, light from any source is essentially the same thing: a bunch of photons. Without getting into the physics of what light is, let's just agree that all a flash does is pump out a bunch of photons.

A flash can also pump out some photons.

Why Is Flash a Good Option?

Naturally there will be some limitations to image quality, such as default cropping, file size, or the ability to recover overexposed or underexposed images, but there's still an impressive amount of work that can be captured using nothing but a smartphone and some good light.