Tiggers like to bounce, maybe flashes do, too?

So why did I spend all that money on a really expensive flash? It didn't do anything when I put it on the camera. But wait a minus...I see those guys at weddings and stuff aiming the flash straight up. Seems weird, but I'll give it a shot.

1/80th at f/5.6, ISO 100

That looks better. Much smoother. what happened? The flash isn't even aimed at the bear. How did it light it better?

The key is light source size. The quality of light out of any flash is related to the size of the light source in relation to the subject. In this case, now that we aimed the flash at a nice, white ceiling, we just turned the whole ceiling into a great, big, massive light source.. It's smoother, it's got doe quality to it.

But there's still some shadows under the chin. Maybe that little bounce card thingy built in? Let's give that s shot.