Whether you work in fashion, advertising or editorial, flash is often the only way to achieve a certain look, feel, or level of control, but that doesn't mean the results have to look uniform. Portrait photographer Richard Ansett says his flash technique is what separates his work from documentary photography, for example, while Satoshi Minakawa uses innovative lighting to add a daring twist to his car shots, and in William Selden's hands lighting helps create subtle yet sophisticated fashion and advertising. These four photographers use flash in highly idiosyncratic ways, defining their styles and achieving their distinctive looks.

Richard Ansett

Richard Ansett is known for his social-documentary approach to commercial work but says his style is defined by 'deliberate use' of flash lighting. His almost obsessive attention to lighting helped him get an honourable mention in the PX3 La Prix de la Photographie last year, and his portrait of a woman in a brain-scanning cap won a place in the 2009 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition. Recent clients include Vanity Fair and 4Creative. His recent personal project, No Coat On Fatal Attraction, really captures the eye, featuring a bald cat caught frozen in mid-air, in a variety of poses. To achieve it, Ansett needed to strictly control the space.

'It was a small room, with one flash directed left-to-right,' he says. 'Because of the white walls there was an even spread (of light), but I had to use a fast flash to freeze all movement. The more powerful the flash, the more energy used and the longer the flash duration, so there'll be movement, so I had to turn the flash to minimum. To get the right power into the image, I had to use a Profoto with a double-head, at minimum setting - you need the double-head to get the power back in (without lengthening the duration). It was an emotional hit when I got it right.'

In this case the subject matter called for tight control, but in fact Ansett always carefully manages his light. 'I almost entirely direct a light right-to-left, and use a single soft box,' he says, and adds that he also likes to 'feather-light' his subjects, direct light from a single soft box to just miss the subject. It gives a softer, more natural feel to pictures, and also casts more light onto floors and backgrounds. 'A direct soft box means a lot of light on skin but not much elsewhere,' he explains. 'We've got the flash mounted on a shopping trolley, which means I can direct my assistant to make these minute adjustments until I get it right.'

Ansett owns a Profoto 7b pack with four heads, one in the trolley. He also uses older Norman 400Bs for location work.

Satoshi Minakawa

Satoshi Minakawa specialises in shooting sport, fashion and cars, having originally studied anthropology and photography and shot in a documentary style. Now he's a firm adherent of studio lighting. 'I love the solidness and boldness of flash and HMI lighting,' he says. 'Plus available light is hard to control. I use Profoto because I know the equipment well and my favourite item is my Profoto Pro-8 pack, for its faster flash duration and precise control.'

Minakawa owns his own equipment, because it's more convenient than unpacking, repacking and returning hire kit for small shoots, and currently has three power packs, a beauty dish (large reflector dish), a grid attachment, an 8x8ft frame with silk, umbrellas and other bits and pieces. He tends to use the umbrellas and beauty dish the most, though, only hiring kit for bigger shoots that need more power.

He recently completed a shoot for Lexus magazine, which offered little budget but plenty of creative freedom. Nevertheless, he took a subtle approach. 'I think lighting technique and creativity need to be equally balanced,' he explains. 'I don't like images where only technique stands out. More important to me are composition, facial expression, posing and colour.'

Like many car photographers, Minakawa used a combination of HMIs and flash for the Lexus shot, more specifically two 1200W HMIs, a 575W HMI and two 2400W Profoto Pro-8 packs, but he used them in a distinctive way, setting the exposure from about one-and-a-half to three seconds and shaking the camera various ways during exposure. This technique would have been hit-and-miss before digital, but Minakawa says the new possibilities are a mixed blessing. 'Digital saves time but it has made me a little lazy,' agrees Minakawa. 'For example, I used to take time to find the best colour gel. Now I just choose something close and do the rest in Photoshop. However, I still set up the best lighting I can. It is almost impossible to change the heights and angles of lights in Photoshop."

William Selden

William Selden has an expert finger in many photographic pies, shooting a wide range of images for clients in fashion and advertising such as Uniqlo, Dazed & Confused and Prada. A former model, he says his work's strength is down to his mix of rigorous ideas and his art school background, and he likes his lighting to be simple yet creative. 'When I wanted to be a photographer, I thought that lighting was really complicated, but it's simple: you do what you like and don't get bogged down,' he says. As a result, many of his images have a clean, deceptively natural look.

'For me, colour, composition and my relationship with the subject are the most important,' he explains. 'I have the same basic set-up for all my shots, but the possibilities within that are endless. Generally, I tend to use two to three flash-heads with brollies, sometimes with grid attachments to direct the light.'

Selden always hires kit, arguing that there's no reason to buy when his clients always provide a hire budget and the studio usually provides the lights. As this approach suggests, he's happy to use any brand.

For the Jarvis Cocker portrait shown, he put the lights up high to mimic midday sunlight. 'I hate low-angle lighting that tries to recreate evening light,' he says. 'For this shot, I may have half-closed a brolly to soften things up, but I like to avoid fill (flash). I altered the shadows in Photoshop to achieve a softer look.'

He's a big fan of digital capture, which he believes has enabled his lighting style. 'Photography's changed so much in the last 15 years, everyone's huddled around a monitor (on shoots) now,' he says. 'It's more collaborative. There must have been more photos taken in the last 10 years than in the 150 years before, thanks to digital. And I suppose that deadlines are set for digital nowadays -clients want things next-day, the benchmark's for digital.'

Dan Tobin Smith

Dan Tobin Smith started photographing still lifes eight years ago and still uses film to this day, shooting with a 10x8in camera if he can get away with it. 'I like to print large, and on 10x8 there's so much more colour information,' he says. 'But with shoots involving movement, it's better to shoot digital.'

For a recent shoot for Creative Review, Tobin Smith photographed 12 flash-heads arranged in a large letter 'A', and providing all the lighting for the shot. It's a typically innovative approach and he rarely uses the same set-up twice. 'In House of Straw 2009, I needed 20 lights to light the floor,' he says. 'I shot it on 5x4 with Profoto strips and Broncolor heads - I use whatever the shot needs.' This kind of stunt has earned him the nickname 'Mr Lights', and Tobin Smith is nothing if not inventive. 'I've lit using video projectors,' he says. 'They give out a very point-source, flat light with harsh shadows. I'll also use daylight. If I can control it, I'll use it. It's all about control.'

But, he adds, the older he gets, the simpler his technique gets. 'Now I think that lighting everything is wrong,' he says. 'You can bring back detail using fill, flags and bracketing, or by pulling it back later (in post-production). With 10x8 you need a lot of lights, because you're often shooting at f/45, f/64, whereas with digital you're shooting around f/16. Sometimes I'll flash one light 10 times to get the power up. I also bracket more with digital as whites burn out so horribly.

'I use Profoto and Broncolor and a lot of it is hired, but I own about six Profoto strip lights and Profoto D4, 4800K, packs. The Broncolors I own are Graphite 3200s with twin heads. That means I can shoot on low power (to freeze movement).'

And although he'll happily use Photoshop, he also tries to get as much as possible in-camera. 'Recently I wanted to soften some lighting, and rather than do it in post-production, I added smoke to the set and shot through the haze,' he laughs.