It’s the middle of the day, the sun is nice and bright, so why do you need flash?

1) Use the Sun as your second light source
The myth that the photographer needs to put the sun over their shoulder is a lie. Let me repeat that. IT IS A LIE. The reason for the myth is that your subject will be well lit and there will be no lens flare. So why is this a bad thing? Yes, there is some light, but chances are it isn’t good light. It will leave harsh unflattering shadows on your subject. And if it does indeed light your subject’s face, then that means they have the sun in their face and are all squinty, and who wants a picture of that?

By putting the sun behind your subject, it acts as a second light source. It gives your subject gets a nice halo effect through their hair, and your flash fills in their face so it isn’t blocked in shadow. And best of all, no squinty picture.

2) Overpower the Sun
How many times have you wanted to shoot outside on a nice and sunny day? I’m guessing… all the time? The nice, sunny, beach or park kind of day is actually a terrible time to take pictures. Why is that? The sun is hard light, which leaves harsh shadows. In the middle of the day it is right overhead and leaves bad shadows under your eyebrows, under your eyes (giving you the raccoon look), and under your chin, which makes your neck disappear.

This image (above) was taken with no flash. You can see that on the sunny side of the face and body, there are blown out highlights where you lose detail. Likewise, on the shadow side of the face, you still lose detail because it is to dark. Now take a look at the bottom picture.

The flash is used to fill in all of those nasty shadows, and gives your picture a softer look, and gives your subject more flattering features. By using the flash, you get rid of the bad shadows the sun gives you by creating your own. This picture was created using an external flash to the right of the camera (same direction as the sun). No camera settings were changed besides turning on the flash. The main shadow he casts is generally left unchanged. His body is more evenly lit, and even though the light direction remains the same, it is much softer and gives much more detail. Now who can say the second picture’s quality isn’t better? And nothing changed (besides the smile, of course).

You can use this principle for a bunch of different things. A few more examples: using it to get rid of bad shadows from under a tree that leaves dappled light from all of the leaves when the sun is shining through, and shooting indoors where there is plenty of light, but it comes from harsh, unflattering overhead lights, like the types used in interrogation rooms. Basically, now you can use this technique anytime you don’t like the light and shadows you see, so you can get rid of the shadows. (Or create your own!)

3) Look EPIC.

There is no time difference in between these two pictures. The first picture used natural light, and the exposure was set for the two ladies in the foreground. So why is the second picture so much better? Because I used a flash to light the foreground, that meant the camera could set its exposure much lower (make the picture darker). What your eye can see and what your camera can see are very different, and the camera could not see the clouds behind them, but I could. Without a flash, you would still see the clouds, but the subject would appear black. The flash gave their faces nice contrast, as well as brought out the detail in the rocks they were sitting on.

So next time you go out at noon shooting, bring the flash along and see how you can use it to improve your shots. Let us know what you were able to do with it. Until next time… Enjoy.

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