How to...

[Bifurcator]

I obviously disagree. You can ask them if you like though.

 

[Alpha]

A flash + USM will take care of the shadows no problem. I'm not entirely ruling out the possibility of shadow/highlight, but the apparent contrast is clearly the result of unsharp masking and I find it more plausible that the bright shadows would be the result of flash than shadow/highlight.

Edit: Also, at 1600 ISO, shadow/highlight would, IMO experience, make them far more noisy than they are now.

Edit again: After looking through more of them I can see a bit of a sat bump.