More outdoor light balancing

Without flash outdoors, you are usually left with photos that look like one of these two where either the subject is underexposed and the background is exposed properly, or the subject is lit properly and the background is completely blown out. In this case the subject is sitting in the shade which provides a soft light on his face.



With a flash you really have control of two exposures though, one near lit by the flash, and one further away lit with ambient light.

In this next set of photos, the subject is in the shade, creating very good light to photograph the model. Again, the background is completely lost.


This can be addressed by taking a picture of just the background, and using those settings on the camera in manual mode. Then triggering the flash to fill in the remaining light. Using an EV-1 adjustment seems to work well with my camera. Here is a photo, though less interesting, probably with a better exposure. Notice that the background is not lost.



Here is an example of photos after the model had wandered off. The first picture is actually more interesting with the contrast of shadows in the foreground, however if there had been a model there the face would have been covered in shadow.



This second photo uses a flash to fill in the shadows. Again, this would have made more sense if the model had not wandered off, but the principle is still illustrated.