Portrait challenge - #3 - messing about with flash

What's in the box Sammy? It's the SB600 in remote mode. Advice would be, once the subject starts actually playing with the flash, stop taking photos. SB600 does bounce (and not in the photographic sense), I've discovered.

Can't decide which of these two I like most, so here's both.

Both pics: 50mm, f6.3, 1/60s, spot, ISO 400

Pleased with portrait shot

Obviously the subject can't be helped, but think this is one of my favourite portrait shots I've done.

Not sure of exif. Suspect something along the lines of 1/30s, f8, ISO400, looks like it was when we were playing with both flashes on remote, off camera.

Dark wedding dances

Often a problem at events, and not just weddings, lots of people, lots of motion, dark room, mixed lighting, high ceilings and nowhere to use bounce flash. Traditional approach is relatively fast shutter speed , perhaps dragging it a little to try and bring up the background (in this case
1/30) and keeping fingers crossed. Personally, I find this gets pretty lacklustre results, flashed out foreground (thanks for unwittingly demonstrating Alice!), dark background and "frozen" motion doesn't tell the story.

Been playing around with a really long dragged shutter (1 or 2 secs) and rear flash for the last few weddings I've been to, to see what effects I can get.


Might just be me, but I prefer the second approach - warmer, more dynamic, goes someway to actually showing what was going on in terms of motion and excitement, but rear flash rescues enough detail so you're not just seeing a mess of blur!

Interested to find out what you guys think.

(I've not touched the images, other than to save as JPGs by the way - I'd crop both tighter and I'm sure playing with D-lighting or similar on the first could help it)