harsh outdoor sunlight

This past weekend, we were at a daytime wedding, which made taking properly exposed photographs extremely difficult. As opposed to the evening weddings where everything is underlit, the outdoor photos were very harsh lights.

Since I was only taking pictures for my own enjoyment, I didn't press the issue. I did however come across a set of photos to illustrate a photo in the shade with a brighter background.

The first photo was from a different camera, and I can only assume was metered for the whole frame. As the subjects in the photo, we were underexposed relative to the rest of the frame.


This photo is taken from my camera. While I think the subject was more correctly metered, the subjects in the foreground are still in the dark and shadows dominate our faces. Because I was above the max-synch speed, the flash did not fire. I should have left the flash in high speed synch mode, which would have likely fixed this photograph. Note that the sky and sidewalk are both white as they have been blown out.


This last photo uses the flash after I made exposure adjustments to get under my high speed synch limit. Now the foreground subjects are lit brighter than the background subjects and the shadows on the faces are filled in. Ideally the flash would have been taken off the camera and placed a little further left, but as a fill flash it worked well enough on camera. Note that the different areas (foreground and background) are much better balanced and little detail is blown out. The green plants are greener and the sidewalk is still visible, but probably the photo is still overexposed because I had to adjust to get below the max-synch speed.