Strobist: Playing with my Beer

My first strobist "assignment" has to do with positioning the light. The reason why on axis flash looks terrible is because it "flattens" everything. There's no shadow detail and no sense of depth. As an example, look at this terrible picture:

That's pretty much every picture you've taken at a dimly lit party for Facebook. Now, let's move the flash over to my left. Most people call this "45 degrees."

Hey look! Shadows! The light gradient also shows shape and depth to the beer. This is much more pleasing, and interesting, to look at. The more people look at my pictures, the more they will like it. Maybe. Now, let's look at a picture taken from the perspective of the flash in the above picture.

This looks exactly like the first picture. Flat, boring, blah. The idea here is to think both in terms of the flash's position around the subject and your position in relation to the flash and the subject.

OK, last two pictures. I actually like the picture with the flash slightly behind parallel to the subject because it gives a good amount of rim lighting.