It needs to give you the ability to use flash lighting. Then you could learn about how you can use flash to give a scene a completely different look, for example by using a wide aperture and short exposure to get the girl properly illuminated but have the background look very dark. This works because the flash delivers all its light in a very short period of time so it is completely unaffected by the shutter speed. So once the flash power and aperture are set to give a proper exposure on the subject the shutter speed can be adjusted to give different levels of background illumination.