In my experience, people are more disappointed with their outdoor photography than any other kind of images. They complain about the washed-out sky—it was very blue when they took the picture—as well as ugly shadows on people’s faces, bad exposure, and highly contrasting, harsh shadows that go through their pictures.
Why do all these problems occur? At the most basic level, it’s because your digital camera works differently from the way your eyes do. When you look around outside, your pupils—the apertures of your eyes—change diameter constantly to adjust for varying light conditions throughout the scene. When you look toward the sky, your pupils close so you see rich, blue colors. Look under a tree, and your pupils immediately open to help you see in the deep shadows that are down there. And then there’s the fact that your eyes have a much wider range of exposure values than a camera does. When you press the shutter release on your camera, it has to choose a single exposure level and try to depict the entire scene with that one reading—regardless of how dramatically the light changes throughout the picture. It is a miracle that we can get good pictures at all. That said, there are many strategies we can employ to get great pictures outdoors.
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Taking pictures outside should be a no-brainer, right? There’s plenty of natural light from the sun, so why do so many outdoor photos come out underexposed and disappointing, like the top image in Figure below? Your digital camera’s built-in flash is convenient, but it isn’t terribly smart. Outdoor portraits are a perfect example. If you leave the flash on automatic when you shoot outdoors, you can guess what happens: The camera decides that there’s plenty of light and doesn’t trip the flash. Sure, the camera’s correct in concluding that there’s enough light in the entire frame. But it can’t tell when your subject is sitting in a shadow.
Everybody with a little picture taking experience knows how ornery and feeble an automatic flash is, indoors or out. If you’re too close to the subject, it overflashes, turning your best friend into a nuked-out ghost. If you’re farther than about eight feet away, the flash is too weak to do anything useful at all. Believe it or not, the camera’s automatic mode is wrong about half the time. No matter what kind of camera you have, you’ll take your best pictures when you decide to use the flash, not when the camera decides.
1. Forcing the flash to fire
The solution to the situation in Figure below is to force the flash on a very common trick. If you’re close enough to the subject, then the flash provides fill light to balance the subject’s exposure with that of the surrounding background, as you can see in the bottom photo. (If you’re using your on-camera flash, stand within about eight feet of the subject so you can get enough flash for a proper exposure.) The fill-in flash can dramatically improve outdoor portraits. It eliminates the silhouette effect when your subject is standing in front of a bright background and frontal light is very flattering. It softens smile lines and wrinkles, and it puts a nice twinkle in the subject’s eyes.
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When most folks think of portrait photography, they envision studio lighting, canvas backdrops, and a camera perched upon a tripod. But many photographers don’t have access to lavish professional studios, and honestly, it’s not necessary for dynamite portraits.
All you really need is a willing subject, a decent outdoor setting (preferably with trees), and your digital camera, and you can be on your way to creating outstanding images.
First, start with the magic rules for great outdoor portraits:
1. Try adding supplemental light from the flash or a reflector.
Turning on the flash outdoors is a trick that wedding photographers have been using for years. If you really want to impress your subjects, position them in the open shade (such as under a tree) with a nice background in the distance. Then turn on the fill flash and make sure you’re standing within 10 feet (so the flash can reach the subject). The camera will balance the amount of light from the flash with the natural background illumination, resulting in an evenly exposed portrait (see figure below). A variation on this technique is to turn off the flash and use a reflector to “bounce” the light back toward the model’s face. The advantage here is that the reflected light is softer than that from a fill flash.
By putting the subjects in the shade, you can control the lighting. For this shot, a fill flash was used on top of the camera to illuminate the subjects with an even front light.
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