this is how it starts. You have success with flash for the first time, you say you 'still prefer natural light'. Then one day you use it 'just for fun' in a situation where you didn't think you needed light at all. You sort of like the results. Maybe its a month later, maybe its a year later, but soon enough you're using some form of flash almost all the time.
The thing about speedlights or OCF in general is that it can provide as much or as little of the light as you want. You've got control over it. You can then use the ambient to get certain aspects of the background or maybe some other aspect of the subject right, and then use your flash to perfectly nail the subject's face. Maybe you're using a backlight subject in sunset light as a gorgeous hairlight. Maybe you love the way it lights up the subject's golden flowing hair, maybe you love the sunset background. But your subject's face is too dark. Preiously, as a 'natural light' photographer, you'd be left with either losing that gorgeous hair light and background, or having a subject with a dark face that you had to fix in post, making a face noisy (which is obviously sort of ugly) Or maybe with some crazy concoction of gigantic reflectors, you can barely squeak in enough light to get a face light enough to where fixing it in post 'won't be all that bad'. But you'd still feel slightly disappointed in the shot, sure, you'd have the cop out of 'well, that was just the light I had to work with, I can't very well move the sun!". However, now that you are a flash master, you can have IT ALL. ALL THIS AND MORE, IT CAN BE YOURS! Simply for the price of a cheap speedlight and maybe a cheap speedlight softbox kit, a monopod held by a breathing light stand.
Ambient lighting + a speedlight or strobe off camera is still probably the greatest, most versatile two light setup you'll ever find. It allows you to control the ratio of brightness of your subject to your background, basically however you want. By adjusting your aperture, and/or the power of the flash, you can make your subject lighter or darker. Using shutter speed, you can make your background lighter or darker (shutter speed doesn't change the flash, only the ambient light).
Great pictures by the way! echo what Derrel said. Hard to believe this is your 5th time using flash. Pretty soon you'll be a daily reader of strobist
