Photo Tip #41 By Bruce Kirkby Jul 30, 2008

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READY FOR THE most counterintuitive photo tip you’ve ever read? On brilliant summer days, with the sun shining high overhead, turn your flash on. Yep, I’m serious. This technique, known as “fill flash,” is a great approach to use whenever bright sunlight is casting dark shadows. What the flash does is fill in (i.e. lighten) the shadows on your subject, while the sunny sections of the photo remain unaffected (because your flash doesn’t hold a candle to the power of the sun).

The theory

In bright, sunlit conditions, a camera will render shadows as black voids with no detail. Faces are particularly affected: eyes appear sunken, the nose casts a shadow and anyone under a baseball cap is almost unidentifiable. Fill flash can help reduce contrast, adding light to the shadows and sometimes literally putting a twinkle in your subject’s eye.

How to

In daylight conditions, you’ll have to force your camera’s flash to fire. (In “auto” mode, it will not fire because the camera senses—correctly—that there is enough light.) With most point-and-shoot models, you do this by scrolling through your flash options until the lightning bolt symbol appears alone. (You’ll probably have to move past “auto,” “red-eye” and “off.”) For a more subtle effect, advanced shooters should try reducing their standard flash power by -1.0 to -1.7 eV.

When to

Fill flash works best when your subject is 10 feet or less from the lens, so get close. Try turning your flash on at the beach while your kids are frolicking in the water, or on the golf course for a group portrait. Fill flash is also a great technique to use for action images—a friend’s triathlon, playing fetch with the dog, an afternoon mountain hike—because it helps to freeze motion.