How to shoot fashion with inbuilt flash?

I'm 15 years old and its been 1 year since i started photography. I want to be a fashion photography but i'm not getting good shots in fashion photography. I have a nikon D5000 and i use - 50mm 1.8 f for fashion photography. As i use inbuilt flash i don't get good pictures. Is there any way how i can get good pictures using inbuilt flash. Pictures which i have taken with the flash in my camera have shadows, harsh light and they look sort of irritating. Is there any way how i can get professional fashion shots with the equipment which i use?

Flash off camera or a ring flash.

You can get fairly inexpensive flash gns with optical slaves, they are set up manully on a stand and will fire at the same time as your on camera flash.

Or it could be used with a radio trigger.

On camera flash is not up to the job, and thats the simple unwanted fact of the matter.

You can take ok/good photos with in-built flash. What you need though is a thing called a diffuser.

An effective diffuser can spread the light of a flash giving a much softer effect to it. Note that in-built flashes aren't as effective for this scenario because of their low power but in a poorly lit room can be useful.

A good example of how a diffuser would look like:

It can be make with any material, but semi-transparent white material is the best. This can be thin plastic or plain paper.

If you use on camera flash it WILL be harsh light - because the on camera flash is small and a frontal light source.

Fashion photographers use off camera flash because they can vary the direction of the light (which helps to 'sculpt' the model) and can add modifiers such as umbrellas or softboxes (the larger the light source relative to the subject, the softer the shadows).

So, you need a large light source to get soft shadows & at a different angle from frontal if you want to get some definition of shape. A large north facing window will do - if the light through the window is too hard then fix a white sheet over it.

Outdoors, you need to use a diffuse light (in the shade) but try to avoid getting 'flat' light.

You can get a single flash off camera relatively cheaply - a YN560 speedlight (battery flash) costs around £50, radio triggers to fire it, about £18. A light stand & umbrella would be about £30-40.So for around £100 you could have a single light setup. A reflector is handy - an 85cm 5-in-1 reflector cost less than £10 on eBay.

Edit: the diffuser Tech mentioned to 'soften' light will do b**ger all to make the shadows softer - it's still too small (remember, soft light is about how big the light source is relative to the subject) and it's still on axis.

Inbuilt flash is useless for anything except fill-in to kill harsh shadows in bright sunlight or as a gentle "top up" for natural light.

A good exernal flash would be a good investment so you can at least bounce it off walls or ceiling. Failing that take your pictures outside.

A diffuser won't help - I tried it. The flash power is so low that the diffused light is so feeble that it barely reaches the subject. You still have a single point source of light and the pictures look just as harsh.

Shoot outdoors.

In fashion and portraiture photography, lighting is everything. The 3 strobe setup is the classic studio configuration.

This requires a strobe coming from the right, another coming from the left at a reduced output, and a third strobe to highlight - and separate the background.

Even in daylight conditions, often an off-camera flash is required to highlight correctly.

On a budget, you can probably get by with a SB-700 flash and a Gary Fong Lightsphere diffuser, and optionally, a reflector panel.