Without any doubt, the worst, most horrible, ugliest way to light any subject is with the little flash light that now comes built into every camera. The lighting is flat giving the impression that your subject has been run over by a steam-roller, such shadows as there are are very harsh and look more like an outline than a shadow and, if you are photographing someone looking straight back at the camera, they will probably have red eyes.

All these problems are caused by one thing, the flash is too close to the camera lens, the closer the flash is to the lens the bigger the problems. In the 'good old days' the flash was a separate item which clipped onto the top of the camera and, more importantly, could be detached from the camera. Even holding the flash at arm's length from the camera will improve the photo in all three respects. Also, with the separate flash guns, it was possible to bounce the light off a wall or ceiling giving a much more natural, softer light. If you can stand carrying a bit more kit around with you, I urge you to get a separate flash gun, they are still made for most of the more serious cameras.

There will, of course, be times when you must either use the built in flash or go without the picture, so what can you do to make things a little better? If there is any light at all, then use as much of it as you can. Modern autofocus cameras tend to do this automatically, they use the widest aperture to let as much natural light in as possible and add the flash to bring the exposure up to what is neccessary. They might, however, be a little stingy with the shutter speed. The camera, after all, cannot be expected to know whether your subject is moving or not and whether you have a steady hand. Try changing the exposure mode to shutter priority and set a shutter speed of about 1/30th of a second, if you have a steady hand and there is not too much movement in the scene, this may well give you a sharp enough photo.

One of the ugly things that I mentioned at the top of the page is the 'outline' effect you get when the flash light casts a shadow on the wall behind the subject. This can be minimized or eliminated by either posing your subject against a dark coloured wall or, better still, getting them as far away from any walls as possible. The drop off in the intensity of your flash light is such that a white wall ten metres away will be quite dark if you are taking a close-up shot.

Red eyes have been a major problem for camera manufacturers since they first started including flash guns in their cameras. There are many complicated an ingenious methods being tried to eliminate the problem but, in my experience, none of them seem to work. The most common method in use at the moment is the 'pre-flash', which is usually a series of flashes fired quickly just before the shot to try to close the pupils of your subject(s) and thereby lessen the problem. Apart from the fact that this does not seem to work that well, the problem is that people think that you have already taken the picture and start to walk away. In this digital age I would advise you not to use these fancy settings on your camera, live with the red eyes, and paint them out afterwards in Photoshop.

The picture above shows the dreaded 'outline shadow', a result of using the in-camera flash. Although the contrast of the shadow has been softened by the available light, it is still, annoyingly, there.

The picture above was taken on the same day, with the same camera and flash. If you look really closely at the side of the head you can see the shadow but, because the wall behind is dark, it hardly shows at all. Once again the shadows have been greatly softened by making the most of the available light.

The dreaded 'red eye' caused by light bouncing directly back from the centre of the eye. Although we have three types of receptors in our eyes, to collect the red, green and blue light, the red ones are concentrated in the centre.

It's easy enough to retouch the eyes in Photoshop or any paint programme, just zoom in close, select the right size brush and spray in some black. Then change the brush size to a smaller one and put in the white highlights. Be careful to put the white highlights in the same part of each eye otherwise she will look cross-eyed. I got a bit carried away while I was doing this one and took out some of her freckles as well.I will be writing some Photoshop tutorials on this and other subjects soon.