Dynamic lighting with one flash

I wanted to share how I have achieve this image with only one single Canon 580EXII.

Here is the story:

We are moving my friend into his new house in Aylmer. The house is unbelievably gorgeous. The windows are perfectly place to achieve some remarkable natural lighting shots. So we setup the appliances and the furniture around their home. We place the dining table and I see the father of my friend sitting at the end of the table.  I just had a flash of the godfather movie (except he was not dressed for the shot). I saw that the "sandwich lighting" was just at a perfect intensity that I just needed to had fill flash to properly exposed the face and front of the subject.

I decided to mount my Canon 580EXII on my Canon 5D MarkII and bounce the flash of the ceiling to achieve the desired look. All this took a big 15 seconds to plan, react and fire my test shot.

I then proceeded to ask the subject to stand in this position to achieve the desired look.

Here is the image:

Canon 5D MarkII

Canon 70-200mm f2.8L

Canon 580 EXII

1/640s, ISO 2500, 70mm, flash E-TTL.

Here are some more images from this awesome day:

Thank you and I hoped you have enjoyed, 

A video of the poker game will follow once I am properly trained on video editing.

Sébastien D'Amour - Wedding and lifestyle photographic artist.