Ceiling bounce and no catch lights.

Raptor Mike

Raptor Mike

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I did a shoot of some children at play recently and bounced a bare ocf off the ceiling to prevent heavy shadows. The problem is that a lot of the eyes don't have catch lights, even though the child is looking at me. What am I doing wrong and is it okay to add them?
 
A small bounce card would have helped - whether it's OK to add them is your call. If you think it'll help and you can do it convincingly, who'd know?
 
You will only get catchlights if there is something bright for the eyes to reflect.

As Phil says, the simplest way of getting catchlights in this case would have been to use a bounce card.
Alternatively, you could have bounced your flash off a surface (maybe behind you?) which would have produced catchlights.

That said, nobody cares about catchlights except a few people on internet lighting forums (with one exception that I know of - see below).

I have sold god knows how many photos to the subjects of those photos. Some had three catchlights, some two, some one, and some had none.
The only person who has ever mentioned catchlights to me was my sister in law, who insisted that I remove catchlights from every single photo of her daughters - because they didn't look "natural".

Have you shown the photos you took to the children's parents? If so, did any of them mention the lack of catchlights?
I thought not... ;)
 
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That said, nobody cares about catchlights except a few people on internet lighting forums (with one exception that I know of - see below).
Click to expand...

no, but eyes can have a tendancy to look a little 'dead' without them.

Just pop another flash on very lowest power somewhere near your camera, it'll give you a catchlight
 
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