Proud Photography Blog

When taking photographs outside on a sunny day, you will notice issues of shadows especially when the sun is behind your subject, or you have placed them against a wall and the light is causing a harsh shadow.  Fill in flash is a very useful technique that you can use to fill in the dark areas and add some luminance to the image.

Fill in flash is called this because it is secondary to the main or ‘key’ light (in this case, daylight).  On a very bright day, the camera may or may not decide the need for fill in flash – some cameras may be fooled into thinking that it is very bright and therefore flash isn’t necessary.  If so, you need to override the cameras instincts and choose force the flash to fire.

As a side note – remember that you can use reflectors to add some light but in cases where the sun is very harsh, it is unlikely to be strong enough to counteract the shadows.  You can use the on camera flash or a separate flash gun.  If you use the latter choose a flashgun which has TTL (though the lens) metering, which means the camera and flash can communicate with one another.  Make sure you check the settings (if you are using a flashgun) – many have preset fill in flash settings, and that you have the correct zoom setting for the lens you are using as the wrongly matched one will result in vignette – where the flash is not wide enough to cover the entire area of the image and you end up with black.
Wide lenses or standard ones also work well with the fill in flash techniques but be wary of long telephotos that can cast a shadow.  One thing to remember is that flash tends to bleach things out.  You want to lighten up the main subject without losing too many details, but how can this be done?

A creative technique to use is to choose the brightest area of an image and take the exposure from this section.  Next, use your exposure compensation function and reduce it by a few stops.  The result is a darker background than foreground giving a sense of drama.  Sometimes using flash in an already bright image can wash it out leaving it looking bland, so underexposing retains some color.
Remember to experiment when playing with the exposure, and seeing how far you can push it for drama.  This technique also works wonderfully with ring flash where the result is a very dramatic sky and an evenly lit subject.  Having the sun directly behind the model then angling the camera upwards slightly towards the model also creates a dramatic effect and retains some detail in the sky.