Flash photography tip: Move your flash further away for more people
Thursday 11 December 2025, 16:32 by Elja Trum | 1,791 views | 0 commentsThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
Do you want to photograph several people at the same time? Then it is a good idea to place your flash a little further away from your subjects. This has to do with the inverse square law. The further away your flash is, the less you are affected by light fall-off.
Suppose you are photographing three people standing next to each other and your flash is coming from the side. If your flash is close to your subject, the first person will be well exposed, but the third person will be underexposed.
Move your flash a few metres further away and everyone will be exposed evenly. Of course, you will need to set the flash slightly brighter, or more powerful, to maintain the same light intensity.
About the author
Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.
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Elja Trum
Photofacts; everything to do with photography!
Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about PhotofactsPhotofacts is made possible in part by
