Flash photography tip: shooting through fabric
Sunday 10 August 2025, 21:12 by Elja Trum | 2,599 views | 0 commentsThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
Are you looking for a creative and unusual flash effect? Try shooting through a piece of clothing fabric. The light passing through the fabric is filtered and refracted, creating unusual patterns, lines and shadows.
For the photo above, I shot through a jumper. This creates unusual patterns and lines. Combined with the shapes of your model, it produces an unusual portrait.
Bear in mind that the fabric can block a lot of light. If you use a denser fabric, you need to turn up the flash (or increase the light sensitivity of your sensor).
With a little experimentation, you will quickly discover which combinations of fabric, distance and light intensity produce the best results for you.
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
