This is one of the things that we all must do, and the question is how do we do it dynamically? The cake is an intimate object, sitting over there in the corner, next to nothing sometimes... but, often there will be a few candles and maybe some ambient light focused on the table, adding to the mood of the reception. Ok, so now we found some ambiance, now what? I recommend that you change up your game! First, I would like to get you in the mindset of how we can utilize a room's ambiance by focusing on the beautiful, sometimes tungsten colored light. On this first photo, we use no artificial light from a slave, just candle light...dont forget about this option folks!

 

Ok, so add a little flash at a very low power, 1/64 power in this case, zoomed to 85mm with about 5 feet of distance. Flash at a 45% angle on camera left, slightly aimed from high to low. Gives a nice little shadow detail on the icing writing. I've isolated the cake away from all the candles on the table. The Black & White frame from this sequence was very sexy to me...especially with the flashflavor coming in...

 

Typically, I'm not a big tilt guy for the sake of tilting just because... I am usually lining up other pieces of the frame to make the tilt work, but in this case, I knew that I had shot this cake 5 times from sunday and this way was going to be different. And, after paying attention to the highlight spots on the M logo from the above example, I decided to zoom on in and focus on the logo. This image ended up being a 12x12 print in the wedding album. Again, same flash settings as above.

 

And finally, add the homemade snoot to the equation and play with shadows.... simple stuff.

 

I have some more flavor to suggest with some other cakes, I'll save that for an upcoming post :) Anybody have any thoughts on this? Care to share your examples and idears on our Flash Flavor Flickr group. Got some discussion threads going there, I think this thing could actually start to become educational!! Comments? leave them here porfavor... Have a blog? Flash Flavor is looking for you... we are trying to spread the word to other photographers, and through links on your photo blog, we are literally spreading around the world! I'm humbled by all the folks that have been sticking our link on their blog-roll. Too cool! Cheers! mateo