As we've discussed before, bounced light depends quite a lot on the material you are bouncing off and its position. A high white ceiling will allow the upwards flash to spread more and thus cover a wider area. A low ceiling (as in the room where I was) limits the spread of the flash. If the ceiling is any other colour/material than white, that colour will give a colour cast on the illuminated area. Luckily there are not too many green ceilings ;-)

A gloss as opposed to a matt ceiling surface will also change the quality of the light. You can also bounce off walls and get a nice side soft light. And if you want the Degas stage underlight light effect, you can bounce off a white floor!  As usual there are no real rules, you just have to try 'em out. The more pictures you take, the more you get an instinct for what would be right in a given situation.

But it is also useful to analyze (rapidly) before you start taking photos in a particular situation. Try to think why a particuar scene has caught your eye. Try to find the essence of the scene. That might help you to decide where to stand in relation to the light and the subject, which lens, what depth of field etc. All of them work together to tell a story.

When you are there yourself, you see everything around you. Your photograph, though, will contain almost nothing of that everything. A person looking at it later will not have any of that other information. So you have to convey that feeling in any way you can. I think many people cannot distinguish between what they feel in a situation, and the feeling framed in the picture they are about to take.

You can't be me, I'm taken