This image is from a shoot I did with my friend Lucé. She's a vocalist, and was in need of some photos to use for promoting her and the band she was working with. We tossed around a few different ideas, and decided to go for some early evening shots. Frankly, this was challenge for me... I do a lot of night shooting, but my subjects are usually buildings and statues and the like, and don't mind staying still for several seconds (or minutes in some cases) so that I don't have to use anything but the available light. While I do know how to use flashes, I very very rarely ever do, especially for portraits. I've just always preferred warm light, and kind of feel that flashes give a pretty cold feel to a photo. I never loved the really harsh shadows that I got with flashes either. Well, after a lot of experimenting, I figured out a way to get the flash to do what I wanted... Basically, I cut two squares out of a pair of panty hose, and took a peach marker to one of them. After the ink had dried, I rubber banded them to the head of my flash, and wha-la... instant diffuser. Why the peach marker on the one? It actually gave a very slight warmth to the light. Nothing major, just enough to compensate for the cold feel of the unfiltered light from the flash. Now if you're asking why not use a commercial diffuser panel on the flash and be done with it, it's really a matter of taste. I love my Olympus E-300 (and the E-1 that I used to borrow from work every once in a while), but there are a couple of areas that I feel they really could have (and in newer E system cameras did) correct. The image sensor favors the color blue, and when shooting someone with darker skin, it gives them a rather unpleasant purple hue to their skin. Granted, since the majority of the time I shoot in Raw, this really isn't a big deal, but when you are doing a big shoot, the extra time spent in post processing to correct the color cast really can add up. I did try a commercial diffuser, and it did soften the shadows, but left the purplish hue to the skin. Hence the rather non-standard method I used. Shot with an Olympus E-1, with an FL-50 flash (and off camera bracket), 50mm Macro lens (best portrait lens Olympus makes in my opinion), F 2.0, 100 iso. Converted to Adobe DNG format and raw developed wit Photoshop CS2. Thanks for stopping by and having a look. Hope everyone has a fantastic New Year. Comments and crits are welcome as always.