Flash is probably one of the most powerful and versatile tools available to the photographer. After high quality optics, I would stipulate that a flash gun be the next most important purchase any photographer should make.

Without a flash, a photographer has to work with available light. This in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but available light can limit our exposure and indeed creative possibilities. With the introduction of flash, the photographer is now in complete control of the lighting within the scene, which opens up the number of creative choices available to us.

But what exactly is flash and how do we use it effectively? Unfortunately with the additional creative possibilities that flash gives us, also comes technical difficulties. In order to produce pleasing results with flash, we need to understand what exactly it is, how it works, how flash affects exposure, when and how it's used and how to control it. So if you're new to flash, there is a learning curve, sometimes a slow frustrating one. But stick with it! Once you've grasped the concepts, it won't be long before you've mastered the use of flash. Hopefully these tutorials will go some way to assisting you in understanding flash photography.

By the way, this tutorial already assumes you have a good grasp of basic exposure. If you haven't then I suggest you read through my exposure tutorial here, or other similar material online.

Rather than bore everyone with everything in this tutorial, I've split it into a few sections. The first section deals with the technical bits relating to flash and the second second section deals more so with the practical elements. The remaining sections looks at real examples of flash in use. A full index of what is included in the tutorial is also listed below.