Turn On the Flash for Better Outdoor Portraits

The nice thing about shooting portraits outdoors on bright days is that there is plenty of light, but the downside is that bright sunlight often causes a lot of contrast, as well as deep shadows under the eyebrows, nose and lips. It seems kind of ironic, but one of the things that you can do to improve almost all outdoor portraits--particularly on bright, contrasty days--is to turn on the built-in flash. By turning on the flash, you open up these shadows and greatly reduce the contrast. It's important though to try and strike a natural balance between daylight and flash. If the flash is equal to the daylight it looks false and if it's more powerful than the daylight (often a problem on cloudy days) you'll get an over-lighted look.

Some cameras do a great job of balancing the flash any time that you turn it on in daylight, while others have a "flash fill" mode and in that mode the camera will automatically create a realistic balance between daylight and flash. Most DSLR cameras (like the Nikon D90 that I used to shoot this photo) also have a flash-compensation control that enables you to set the flash so that it's output is less powerful than the existing daylight. (Look in your camera's manual for info on the flash-compensation feature.) Knowing how much compensation to use is just a matter of making a quick test shot. I often take one shot with the flash compensation in the neutral position and then adjust from there--usually turning the flash down by a full stop which seems to create the most pleasing balance.

You'll know the best balance when you see it, it will just look and feel natural. Also, since you'll be using flash to light the face(s) you can often do some interesting things with light direction. In this shot of my friend Marcella and her son Hart, I positioned her so that the sun was more or less behind them and that provided a nice rim light on their hair. The flash then provided a nice even light on the face, but left the glowing highlights in the hair--it's a nice look and easy to create.

Funny, but probably the single biggest piece of advice that I give to people shooting pictures of people outdoors is to turn on the flash. And I can't remember the last time that I shot an outdoor portrait without flash, even if I had it dialed down a few stops so that it was just putting a highlight in the eyes. Try turning on the flash next time you're shooting people outdoors and I'm sure that you'll find yourself using it all the time.

The Orange Blossom (is) Special

Well, I could hardly tempt you with a photo of the bud (see the previous posting) and not show you the blossom--so here it is. Actually, I think the bud in that posting is the one in the bottom right of this shot. These buds just pop open (I wonder if that's why they're called poppies?) one morning without much warning--you usually don't see the color start to emerge, as you do with other flowers. I shot this one using a bit of fill-in flash to compete with the backlighting and used the flash-compensation setting on my D90 body to set the flash to about 2/3 stop less than the daylight exposure (if you have a D90, the switch for this is on the left side of the prism housing--look it up in your manual, it's easy to use). But the flash was still a little "shiny" looking to me on the orange petals, so I burned them down a touch in Photoshop. Also, I wanted the background to be out of focus, but was able to shoot at the relatively small aperture of f/8 (normally I'd shoot much wider, at f/4, for example) and still keep the background soft because I was using a Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED IF AF-S VR Nikkor Zoom Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras set at 240mm--or the equivalent of 360mm in 35mm (with the cropping factor). This lens does not have the greatest bokeh in the world (bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the out-of-focus region) but it's not too bad. Anyway, I just finished updating my book Exposure Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent so you'll have to forgive me for explaining so much about the exposure--it takes a few weeks to shake this stuff out of my head.

Exposure: Shot at ISO 200 at 1/60 sec., at f/8, with fill-in flash and on a Manfrotto 190XPROB 3 Section Aluminum Pro Tripod tripod. Captured in RAW.

Simple Solution for Creating Soft Flash

One of the problems of using on-camera flash to photograph people indoors is that the light is very harsh and direct causing a ton of problems with glaring highlights and deep shadows. I shot this portrait, for example, of a woman at her desk for a local oil-delivery company. Because it's a busy office and the spaces are tight, there was no room (or time) to set up a big umbrellas or softbox. Instead, I used a Nikon SB800 on-camera flash (mounted on a Nikon D90 body) and used a Lumiquest Pocket Bouncer attached to the flash to soften the light. By bouncing the light into the plastic diffuser (the flash is aimed up into it rather that directly at the subject), it creates a much larger reflective surface for the flash to bounce off of and so softens the light--remember: the larger the diffuser, the softer the light.  As you can see in this shot, there are no really dark shadows of the woman behind here as there would be with direct on-camera flash and the lighting on her face is soft and even.

The Pocket Bouncer is just a triangular white piece of plastic that attaches to your flash (by Velcro or a strap) that softens the light without diminishing the power noticeably. But why read about it, why not let the inventor, Quest Couch (how's that for a cool name?) demonstrate it in the video below:

Frame Flowers Against Black for Drama

One of the problems of photographing close-ups of flowers is that there is usually a lot of clutter around them. You can use sticks and tripod legs and things to try to keep some of this scrub out of the frame, or limit your depth of field to just your subject (use a wide aperture to limit depth of field) so that the background is out of focus, but it's still there. One way to get a nice clean and dramatic look in flower photos is to use a black background. I carry around a big piece of black fabric and also some pieces of black poster board (about a buck a sheet at craft stores). Then when I find a flower I want to isolate, I slip the background in a foot or two behind the flowers (to keep it totally out of focus and with no reflections or bits of white lint showing up).

I used a sheet of back fabric (slung over a lawn chair a few feet behind the flowers) to photograph these bleeding heart flowers in my garden and, just by good fortune, the fabric was in shadow while the flowers were in sunlight. The added contract of sun against shade helps too. I did, however, also use a small amount of fill-in flash because I wanted more depth of field than I was getting and turning on the flash helped me shoot at a smaller aperture (I was working, as always, in the aperture-priority mode) of f/22. Again, because the flash was several feet away from the black fabric (the flash was only about a foot from the flowers), there was no chance of light picking up folds in the fabric, etc. Later in Photoshop I also used the selective color tool to make sure the black was very black.

Get the Maximum Blast from Built-in Flash

As much as I prefer not to use flash in any situation where I can possibly avoid it, there are certain times when it's the only option. This past weekend, for example, I was at an agricultural fair and while it was bright and sunny outdoors the minute you stepped into any of the animal-display barns it was like entering a cave--no light at all. The only solution was to pop on the built-in flash and try to find shots where the flash wouldn't be terribly intrusive or obvious.

There are numerous problems with built-in flash, the most obvious being that the flash is harsh, very directional and rarely flattering. Also, the power of the flash is modest at best and so you are limited in how large a subject you can light and how far you can be from that subject. But in watching several other people (most with point-and-shoots) shooting flash photos in the same barns I noticed several simple things people could have done to improve their flash photos. So here are some quick tips for improving your built-in flash photos:

• Stay within the flash distance range. Most built-in units have a range of roughly 3-12' (your manual will provide the exact range). If you work closer than that (unless you're specifically working in a close-up mode that allows a reduced distance range) you will blast your subject with too much light and overexpose it. Conversely if you're too far away you won't have enough light on your main subject and your photos will be dark.
• Use flash compensation if your subject is very light. Many DSLRS (like my Nikon D90) and zoom cameras have a flash exposure-compensation setting that lets you add or subtract light from the flash exposure (without affecting the main exposure of the camera). If you photograph a very light subject in the foreground (like the sheep shown here) without compensation, the flash will "read" the light reflecting back from the white subject and shut down the flash prematurely (thinking there's plenty of light in the entire scene) so that the overall scene is too dark. In this case I only used +2/3 stop of compensation because I really didn't care if the background went dark (in fact, I wanted it to be darker so the sheep would stand out) but I added that extra two-thirds stop because I thought it would lighten the sheep's wool coat a bit. Read your manual for more about flash compensation.
• Consider buying a Soft Screen diffuser from Lumiquest. Lumiquest makes a great little gadget (under $15) that mounts quickly to your built-in flash and softens the light nicely without absorbing much light. You can watch a video about the product on the Lumiquest site.
• Keep your batteries fresh. Flash is one of the biggest drains on your camera's batteries and so it's important if you're going to be using flash to keep your camera batteries freshly charged. Weakened batteries will delay flash recharging times significantly and will also reduce the maximum flash-to-subject range.
• Allow your camera time to recharge the flash. You can't shoot flash photos as rapidly as you can shoot outdoors in sunlight because the batteries need time to charge the flash unit. Give the camera an extra few seconds between flash exposures and you'll be sure you're getting a maximum blast with each exposure.
• Don't put your fingers in front of the flash. I see this all the time--people putting their fingers or their camera straps in front of the flash unit and blocking the light (or creating unwanted shadows on the subjects). Find a comfortable grip that avoids blocking the flash unit.
• Take chances and hope for the best. There have been a lot of times when I didn't think the built-in flash was worth turning on but I shot the photos anyway. I'm sometimes amazed by the difference just a tiny bit of flash can make--often providing me enough light so that I can save the shot completely in editing. What the heck, if you're deciding between not shooting or taking a chance on the flash, take the chance, you might get a happy surprise.
• Consider buying an accessory flash. If you've been frustrated by the limits of your built-in flash, perhaps it's time to consider buying an accessory flash unit (or dropping lots of hints around birthday time) if your camera has a hot shoe that accepts an accessory unit. A good accessory flash can provide you with a flash range several times longer than a built-in flash unit and offer tons of other flash options like bounce-flash for softer light, etc.

Built-in flash isn't the greatest lighting option in the world, but it sure beats not taking pictures--and it's a whole lot better than carrying flash bulbs in your pocket the way I did when I was starting out!

Metadata: Shot with a Nikon D90 camera with a Nikkor 18-70mm lens; exposure was 1/60 second at f/3.5 with +2/3 stop flash compensation. Shot in RAW format.