How many do you need?

  Obviously the essential form shaper in photography is light. We have the ambient light and then there is the artificial light. So often we tend to love the first, and to fear the second. It feels so safe to rely on the surrounding light. Just choose your aperture and shutter speed and go. But how about when the light surrounding us is not good or there just is too little of it? Of course we could always pump up our ISOs or use a slower shutter, but all this could introduce some other problems, like noise or unsharp subject. That's when the artificial light comes in handy. There's lots of options available, but my favorite is manual speedlights. They are cheap and easy to haul around where ever you go. So, how many lights do you really need for a shoot? I own a couple speedlight units. I carry them with me almost always and everywhere, and then I usually found my self using only one single. We are pretty satisfied with only one sun, so why wouldn't one speedlight do just as well? The only thing to remember is, get that thing off camera. No matter if you use a cable, optical or radio trigger... Get it off your camera! And learn to work with one light first, later it's easy to ad some more lights if you feel or have to. Here's a few portraits made with only on single off camera flash...