Hard Light

The first Strobist exercise was posted last week and comprises a brief exploration of the shadows created by hard light from an off camera strobe at various angles to the subject.
The first image here shows the subject with camera directly in front with the strobe at 45 degrees to the right. The shadow on the wall is very nasty. The subject has been left close to the wall to emphasise this. The speedlight is actually a fair bit higher than the subject which can be seen by the downward slope of the shadow.

The second image shows the effect of the camera at 45 degrees to the left of the subject with the speedlight remaining at 45 degrees right. The wall shadow is equally harsh.

The third and final image shows the camera position at the same position as the speedlight at 45 degrees right. This is equivalent to on camera flash except that the speedlight is higher than the camera. Illumination of the face is more even which is not necessarily a good thing as the image will often look too flat. This is the main problem with on camera flash. The harsh shadow is still visible on the wall.