2000s Paparazzi

One hard flash from the camera position, at night, on somebody who did not agree to it. The light is ugly by accident and that ugliness is the whole signal.

It carries a date. Compact cameras with a built in flash covered celebrity culture for about a decade, and the frames they produced now read as a period as much as a technique.

The flash sits at the lens, so shadows fall directly behind the subject and almost no modelling lands on the face. Highlights on the forehead, the nose and any shiny fabric blow out completely.

Falloff is severe. Anything more than two or three metres back goes to black, which is what turns the street behind into a void with a few streetlights in it.

Framing is off balance. The horizon tilts, the subject sits off centre or half cropped, and focus often lands a little behind or in front of the eyes.

Use it for a night street scene, a caught moment, or anything that wants a 2000s tabloid date stamped on it.

Skip it in daylight, and skip it on a tidy frame. A composed picture with a hard frontal flash reads as a lighting error.

Superstar has many flashes, a visible crowd behind them, and a subject who is posing for all of it. Paparazzi has one flash, no crowd in frame, and somebody moving through the shot.

Count the lights and read the body. One frontal flash on an off balance frame is paparazzi. A wall of them on a held pose is Superstar.

Models soften the light. Asked for a night portrait with flash they return a pleasant fill, which gives you an ordinary night portrait. Say hard direct on camera flash with blown highlights.

The second failure is a composed frame. Ask for off balance framing and a subject caught mid movement, or the shot loses the thing that dates it.