4. On-Camera Bounce Flash Many dedicated shoe-mount flash units offer bounce capability: the flash head can be rotated to direct the flash at a nearby wall, or tilted up to direct the light at the ceiling. The light reflected from the wall or ceiling offers three advantages over direct flash: (1) it's directional (it comes from the side or above, rather than from very near the lens), (2) it's soft, doing away with the unattractive harsh shadows you get with direct flash, and (3) it produces even lighting over a larger area—handy when you're photographing more than one subject, or a subject and its immediate environment. The disadvantages are (1) the light isn't as bright because it has to travel farther and is spread over a large area, so you need a fairly powerful flash unit; and (2) you're pretty much limited to white or light-gray reflecting surfaces—if you use a colored surface, its color will be reflected onto your subject. Left: Direct on-camera flash produces a harsh, flat effect, with shadows on the wall behind the subject. Right: Aiming the flash head up at the ceiling softens the light, provides modeling on the face, and eliminates the background shadow. Photo by Mike Stensvold

5. Strobe Flash Many photographers refer to regular electronic flash units as "strobes." But true strobes are flashes that fire rapidly—many times a second. A number of higher-end dedicated electronic flash units offer a strobe feature that allows you to set a rate (number of flashes per second) and duration (number of seconds), and shoot strobe-effect images that freeze several points of a motion in a single shot. If your flash unit offers this feature, give it a try. A tip: shoot in a large room with dark walls (or outdoors at night), or the background will be overexposed. You can also eliminate the background problem by moving the flash off-camera to one side, so that its light doesn't fall on the background. Top: Strobe flash fires many times per second, freezing several points in an action subject's motion. Because the background receives exposure from each flash burst, it tends to be overexposed unless it's dark and well behind the subject. Bottom: Another way to deal with the background problem is to move the strobe-flash to one side of the camera, so it doesn't illuminate the background. Photo by Mike Stensvold

6. Slow-Sync Flash Effects You can combine the action-freezing brief duration of flash with a long ambient-light exposure to produce motion shots that sharply capture the subject and show motion. With most AF 35mm SLRs, you can even let the TTL automatic exposure control take care of the exposure for you. Set the camera for shutter-priority AE, select the desired shutter speed, fire up the flash unit, and shoot. (With some cameras, the procedure may differ—see your camera and flash instruction manuals for exact instructions for your camera and flash unit.) Because the subject is nearby, the flash unit's brief duration freezes its motion—even the wheel spokes. If this had just been an available-light pan shot at a slow shutter speed, the wheels would have been blurred, too. Photo by Karel Kramer/Dirt Rider Magazine