Taking photos of people outside is a great way of combining nature with portrait shots, and often brings the best out of your subjects. However when lighting your portrait photos outside you should rely on natural sunlight to light your pictures, even Mother Nature needs a helping hand sometimes. When you rely on sunlight you’ll often get light that is too harsh, or too flat, or creates dark areas on the subject’s face. To rectify this you should use something called a ‘fill flash’, or the ‘mode’ setting as it is sometimes known on digital cameras.

This will ensure that you don’t lose any of the details on your subject’s face.

The Fill Flash will create a subtle flash that throws a little light onto your subject’s face. It’s often used by professional wedding photographers to ensure that the bride and groom get the best possible pictures of their special day; particularly when faced by the strong sunlight every bride wants for her wedding day.

The Fill Flash on a digital camera takes a reading of the amount of light in the background of your image, and adjusts the level of the flash to compensate. This ensures that you’re not left with a strong backlight causing a dark effect on your subject’s face, silhouetting your subject.

Be sure not to stand too fare away from your subject though as the effective range of the flash is usually no more than 10 feet.

With the Fill Flash you can experiment using different natural lighting techniques. For example, you could position your subject with the sun behind them, or to the side of them, creating what is often known as ‘rim lighting’. This creates a slight halo effect behind them, highlighting their outline.