Most cameras have flash units.  This is a matter of necessity for the most part as most people are not comfortable shooting in low-light or natural light settings.  In fact, most casual photographers don’t know how to take pictures without the flash, and worse, they don’t realize that a flash is very much important in harsh lighting conditions.  It’s a common enough problem, mainly because the regular casual photographer is not really concerned about the small things, but only about the big picture: did the subject appear in the picture?

A flash is an attachment to the camera to provide much needed focused light on the subject.  Normally this is mounted on top of the camera.  And there lies a story about making the shot better, if only the flash was at the BOTTOM of the camera. I’ll explain this in another post.

The nature of the flash is that it provides an instant of bright light to illuminate the subject.  The light lasts just long enough for the image to appear on film, or to be captured by the scanning element/sensor of the camera.  And since this is focused light from a single source, the shadows would appear emanating outward from it.

There are strategies to make the light more diffused or for it to appear from a different direction.  But as long as you’re using a camera-mounted flash, the light will hit the subject and the shadow would be behind it.

If the subject is too close, usually less than 10 feet, there would be uneven highlights.  It it is too far, usually more than 15 feet, then it would be a bit darker.

[An aside, notice that when in an arena, there are lots of flash from the audience when taking pictures of the performers or sports players?  The cameras are automatically set for flash, usually the picture will turn out fine.  But this is not due to the camera's flash unit.  This is because the subject is already bathed in light and the flash is not needed.]

For the most part, the ideal camera mounting is a ring flash.  This is a ring of flash elements mounted around the lens.  The purpose is to have the center of the picture and the flash one and the same.  There would be no shadows.  However, ring flash elements are expensive.  It’s quite rare to find a ring flash cheaper than $300.  However, these really are great accessories.  A side-effect is that if the background were too near the subject, there would be a halo-effect.  Not an altogether bad side effect.