For a long time, the general rule of thumb for many photographers – both amateur and professional – was that, unless you were talking about heavy-duty, professional flash units, artificial light was bad news. Magazines and books would routinely advise their readers that the best policy was to use natural light wherever possible and avoid using a hotshoe flash.
So, what changed? The answer is twofold. Firstly, as the 20th Century became the 21st, the range of off-camera, wireless flash-triggering options available to photographers using a speedlight flash unit grew exponentially. Secondly, at around the same time, digital capture made itself available to consumers.
Wireless radio triggers allowed photographers to position hotshoe flash units off camera, knowing that they could be reliably fired in perfect synchronisation. Even if this meant…