Watching TV, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

First step in using artificial light is to get a balance – unless you’re using only one light source of course.

In this photograph, my son is lying on the sofa watching TV, and behind him is the window, so I had nice window light which was fairly diffused as it’s overcast and with around a foot of snow outside, that gives the hair and backlight.

On the right of the frame, I had a 580ex flash on a stand fired through a white translucent umbrella at 1/4 power.

This gives light without it looking like flash and good detail in the image with the contours and textures of his jumper.

Increasing the strength of the flash caused it to overpower the window light too much and resulted in a much flatter image.

Balance!