Overpower the sun: Take stunning OUTDOOR PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY with a flash

10/20/2018 ISO 1200 Magazine 0 Comments

Taking portraits in bright sunlight has been a bit of a no-no for a long time but the truth is that you can actually get stunning results if you use a fill flash. The results look awesome and give a high-end feel to any outdoor portrait and the best thing is that it's really not too difficult. You just need to understand how to use a fill flash.

Check out the image below showing why we use a fill flash in photography and the best way to think about it. You can see this in the video at around 1:35.

Basics to using a fill flash.

Set your camera up to expose the background perfectly. Ignore the subject and don’t use a flash at this point.
Take a photo with the subject and you should see that the background looks great but the subject is in silhouette
Add a flash on the subject ‘filling’ them with light. you may need to play around with the flash power a little to get it correct. There is no rule to this as it depends on how bright the ambient light is, what you ISO and Stop is and how close the flash is. but its pretty easy to figure out. Just leave the settings exactly as they were for the background and increase or decrease the flash.

You can see in the first set of photos below that the images look really quite beautiful. I used the tree to give some subtle depth to the shadows. After we did this first shoot I really wanted to show you the power of using a fill flash so we completely overpowered the Sun.

Check out the photos below why we have the sun in the shot and behind the subject yet the model Rosie White is still perfect lit with the photography Fill Flash.

Fill Flash Tips – A few things to remember

Remember what your flash sync speed is. most studio mono flashed sun at either 200 of 250th of a sec. Speed flashed sun a lot faster. Just make sure you have the correct shutter speed for your flash when exposing for the background.
if your flash isn’t powerful enough just move it closer to the subject
Play around and have fun. It sometimes takes a while to get the hang of this technique but the results are awesome.

FINAL IMAGES:

You may also like:

Overpowering The Sun with Flash

Nix Racing: Overpowering The Sun with Elinchrom ELB 1200

Overpowering The Sun with HSS: The James Dean Styled Shoot With Lin & Jirsa

Overpowering the Sun for Dramatic Portraits by Noel Del Pilar

About Photos In Color:

Ed Gregory is a master photographer giving Lightroom, Photoshop and photography tutorials. All serious stuff yes but don't worry he can be a little silly too. After all photography is a form of art....Let's Get Connected: photosincolor.com

Text, image and video via Photos In Color

This article and all the images were originally published by www.photosincolor.com and shared with their permission