Source:www.jimippolito.com



I'm not a fan of flash photography; I prefer natural or "available" light, as photographers call it, but sometimes flash is necessary, even outdoors.

1- Did you ever take a picture of people in a brightly lit environment and end up with dark, unrecognizable faces?

2- Did you ever take a picture of people, in bright light, and everyone was squinting, and looked unnatural?

If so then this tip is for you.

1- When the light behind or to the side of your subject is brighter than the light falling on the subject your subjects faces will be underexposed.

That's when you should use the "Forced Flash," or "Fill Flash," feature on your digital camera.

To use this feature, you must activate your flash by accessing the flash menu and setting it so the funny, downward, crooked arrow symbol shows. This symbol, by the way, is supposed to represent lightening, in case you ever wondered.

Now the flash will be "forced" to fire and properly illuminate your subject's faces.

2- To avoid having your subjects squint due to very bright sunlight, especially when the sun is low on the horizon, position them so the sun is behind them. This way they will not squint and have scrunched up faces.

Of course this means that they will be underexposed due to the fact that your camera's light meter will read all that bright light behind them, as in item 1.

So, again, use the "forced flash" feature for properly exposed faces without having everyone look as if they just sucked on lemons.

Bear in mind though that this will only be effective if your subjects aren't too far away from your camera. You can't do this if they are 50 feet away, but appear to be close because you've zoomed your lens out.

Check your owner's manual to see what the flash distance limits are for your particular camera. Generally the maximum is about 12-15 feet.

Now, there are other ways to compensate for extreme or uneven lighting, such as the use of "spot metering," but this is the easiest way to get the shot and still achieve natural looking results.

I can guarantee you that if I had not used "forced flash" for the above shot the faces would have been severely underexposed due to the brightness to the side and behind the subjects.

If you don't see another posting from me you'll know my wife was unhappy about the picture I posted of her, and her mother, and sent me to that big darkroom in the sky.