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An Introduction to Outdoor Flash Photography

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8 mins

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Bahasa Indonesia

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Diana Eftaiha is a software engineer. You can visit her website at www.dianaeftaiha.com
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Today, we'll be building on our previous tutorial , taking our flash photography outside, and learning how to balance our strobe light with the available sunlight while maintaining subject exposure.
If you’re just getting started with outdoor flash photography, shooting on-location might pose a few new challenges for you. Mainly because the available (or ambient) light source, which is the sun, is one you cannot directly control. However, when you get the hang of outdoor flash photography, you will be stunned by the quality of photos you’ll be able to create.
The trick in outdoor flash photography is that you need to balance your strobe light with the available light. So basically you will be working with (at least) 2 exposures: your flash exposure, and the camera’s exposure.
Now, since we cannot control the light coming from the sun, we need to adjust our camera exposure to it, for correct background illumination. Once we’ve set our camera to match the available light, all we have to do is adjust our strobe light to match our camera settings to get a correct fill light.
It’s important to keep in mind that since you cannot control the available light on-location, make it a habit to shoot at times when the sunlight is at its best. This is when the sun is low in the sky, which would be about 15 minutes before till after sunrise, and 15 minutes before till after sunset (otherwise known as the golden hour).
Most professional photographers prefer to shoot during the golden hour because, if you choose to shoot during the day when the sun is high in the sky, you will get harsh shadows and high contrast scenes which would make it difficult for you and your camera to capture soft, even exposures.
If you’re bound by a certain time and the sunlight is not working in your favor, you can always shoot in the shade. Try underneath some trees, next to a building, or any other location with soft diffused light.
Since you are shooting with your studio strobe, you will have to pay close attention to your shutter speed. You won’t be able to set your camera’s shutter speed to one that is higher than your flash sync speed. That is because, if you do, you’ll end up with photos with dark areas.
Most cameras have a flash sync speed of 1/200s or 1/250s (refer to your camera manual to learn yours), so your camera's shutter speed cannot go any faster than that if you’re planning to shoot with a flash.
So how should you go about setting your gear for an on-location flash photo shoot? First, set your camera to manual mode and choose a shutter speed equivalent to your camera’s flash sync speed (usually 1/250s) for the largest opening possible, or slower for more depth of field.
Second, position your model against a flattering background. Now point your camera just behind your subject (without having them within the frame), and with your camera’s shutter speed set to match the flash sync speed (or slower), adjust your aperture until you get a correct meter reading.
Now that you know your camera’s shutter and aperture settings, all you have left to do is to meter your flash. With a light meter, adjust your flash power till you get an aperture setting identical to that of your camera’s.
Next, take a couple test shots and see how everything looks. An important thing to keep in mind while shooting with your flash outside is to always revise your results, because the available light will be constantly changing as the sun and/or clouds move - especially around sunrise and sunset. So take a few shots and keep an eye on your histogram. If the available light qualities change, adjust your camera and flash settings to match the new light.
We’ve learnt how we can make use of ambient light to correctly expose the background, while maintaining subject exposure using our fill flash. So what happens if we want to under expose or over expose the background for dramatic creative effects?
Keep in mind that, now that you’ve accomplished the right camera and flash settings, everything is correctly exposed. Your camera controls the background, and your flash controls your model. I’ll say it again: your camera controls the background, and your flash controls your model . So if you want to alter background exposure, all you need to do is change your camera’s shutter speed. The fill flash doesn’t need any adjustment since it’s already set to correctly illuminate your subject.
To over-expose the background, you’ll need to set your camera’s shutter speed to a lower setting. So if the correct camera settings are 1/60s at f 2.8 and ISO 100 and you wish to over expose the background by, let’s say 1 stop, your new camera settings would be 1/30s at f 2.8 and ISO 100.
Your strobe settings would remain intact. If you want to blow out the background, you would over expose it by, let’s say 3 stops, so your new camera settings would be 1/8s at f 2.8 and ISO 100.
Using the same logic, to under-expose the background you would ride up your camera’s shutter speed. So if the correct camera settings are 1/60s at f 2.8 and ISO 100 and you wish to under expose the background by let’s say 1 stop, your new camera settings would be 1/125s at f 2.8 and ISO 100. Your flash settings would also remain intact.
We’ve already discussed how shooting in the golden hour is your best bet for great light. But the question is, what happens if you want to shoot during mid-day sunlight? What if there is no shade, or equally, what if you don’t want any shade?
Well, here is where cross lighting techniques come into play. Cross lighting is achieved by having 2 strong directional light beams coming from opposite directions, with your subject in between.
So basically what you need to do firstly is figure out where you want to place your model. Your best bet would be having the sun to their back to the left or to the right, depending on the available background, unless you want them facing the sun and squinting throughout the photo shoot! This light would also act as a separation light (otherwise known as rim light or hair light), so you want to pay attention to how it falls on your model.
Next you’ll place your strobe in the opposite direction, against the harsh sunlight. You’ll probably want to use a bare flash with no diffuser, so that your light can match up the light coming in from the sun.
Now, set your camera to manual mode with your shutter speed set to your camera’s sync speed for the largest opening possible, and adjust your aperture settings accordingly exposing for the background. Once you’re done with the camera settings, turn your strobe light on, say, half power and take a shot.
Review the results. If the strobe light is not bright enough, move it in closer to your subject. If it’s too bright, either move a little further from your subject or even better lower its power for faster recycle time. Shoot and repeat.
If you find yourself outdoors with no strobe light on hand, you can use a reflector instead to bounce sunlight back onto your subject's face. You would go about this by placing your subject with their back to the sun to create a nice rim light effect, highlighting their hair from the back. Have someone help you hold a bounce card against the direction of the sunlight, in front of your subject's face to illuminate them from the front.
Experiment with reflector placement till you get a pleasant fill light that gives you the result you're after. The reflected light hitting your model's face from the front would be softer than the background light, and this would create a nice dramatic effect.
As for the reflector, you could go with one that has one silver side, and one golden side. Those are usually cheap, and they can be folded to fit right into your camera and gear bag. Use the golden side for a warm light effect, or the silver side for a more natural bounced light.
Outdoor flash photography is a very interesting area to explore and once you get the hang of it, it can yield amazing professional results that you wouldn't be able to achieve otherwise.
One thing you need to remember is, practice makes perfect. You need to experiment with lighting and subject positioning to learn what works for you and what doesn't. Once you find what suits you best, you will be on the road to creating great photos.

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Landscape Photography

5 Tips for Setting the Focus in Your Landscape Photography
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Late on a winter evening, I was photographing atop a ridge in Colorado’s Front Range. I had been working on some landscape shots, but with the light fading from the sky, the thought of beer and food was beginning to overwhelm my desire to stay out. The colors were shifting to the deep tones of blue hour , and the light was long gone from the hills. About to give up and head home, I spotted a lone juniper atop a rocky outcrop, perfectly silhouetted against the deep blue of the mountain sky. I sighed, tempted to ignore the scene, but instead put my camera back on the tripod, walked over and composed a shot. With a click, I snapped the shutter.
The image was decent, nice blues with a clean black foreground, but it needed some warmth, an element to contrast with the abundant cool tones. “If only I could get a beam of sunlight to reach back above the horizon…” I thought to myself.
Wait a second… I didn’t need the sun, I had a flash and a remote trigger in my bag. I pulled it out, all thoughts of beer and food forgotten, and placed the flash on a boulder a few feet to my left. I set it low, to 1/4 of full power, then took a shot.
Better, I thought, looking at the image glowing on the back of my camera, but still not right. The light coming from the flash was too cool, lacking the warmth I wanted. Digging back in my bag, I emerged with a pack of gels and slapped a half cut of CTO (color temperature orange) over the flash, and clicked off another.
“Now we’re talking”, I muttered. A warm beam of light crossed the rocky foreground to light up the tree. Never mind that the actual sunlight disappeared 45 minutes before, I could re-create it with a little artificial light trickery. A few adjustments to the flash’s positioning and brightness, and I had my keeper shot. Finally, I could go home.
For most photographers, flash is relegated to the studio, and if used outside it is usually restricted to portraiture. But there is so much more potential for artificial light. Landscape and wildlife photography can often benefit from a little flash, and with some creativity, it can bring out the best in your images. Here are a few tips to help you get using flash for your outdoor nature and landscape photography.
To get started, you’ll need a few things in your bag:
A windmill stands in the garden of the Finca Santa Anita in Salta Province, Argentina.
As with almost all flash use, for best results, you’ve got to get the light off your camera. On-camera, straight flash, looks weird and unnatural. I like to say that photographic rules are meant to be broken, but this one seems universal: get the flash off your camera.
Direction of light, and how much to use it, is a matter of your personal vision, but here are my thoughts: Artificial light should either look so natural, you don’t notice it comes from a bulb, or so obvious, that it’s clear the scene was lit for artistic reasons. Anything in between usually doesn’t work.
As with all successful photography, you need to think through your image, and the story you are trying to tell. Do you want a natural-looking scene or are you aiming for an artistic portrayal of your subject? Once you have an answer to that question you can move forward.
Scrubby pines grow from the rocks of the Dakota Hogback in the foothills of Colorado outside Denver, late evening.
The near-dark hours before dawn and just after sunset, or full night, are the most suitable times to add a bit of light to a scene. A natural look is usually subtle and may rely heavily on the light that is already available to you. In my example of the juniper tree, I kept the flash setting low, and warmed the light with a gel to get a sun-like look. Finding the right balance between flash and ambient light is critical.
The further you get from the flash, the dimmer, and harder the light becomes. A flash aimed toward the ground will be very bright close to the strobe, fading quickly to invisibility. When setting your scene, use the test button to look at the throw of light across your subject. Aim it carefully, and take advantage of the flash’s zoom to consolidate the beam just where it is needed.
A Western Scrub Jay perches in a tree in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains outside Denver, CO, USA.
Once set, pop a shot or two, and check the results on your LCD. Almost always, you’ll find you need to adjust the flash brightness, placement, or the ambient light exposure.
When using flash remember this: adjust ambient light with the shutter speed, and flash with the f-stop (aperture).
For example, if you want to bring out more brightness in the sky, lengthen your shutter speed, if you want to increase the apparent brightness of your flash, open up the aperture. This is effective for small adjustments in camera, and keeps you from having to constantly readjust flash settings.
An artistic look is more straight forward, but light direction, intensity, and color are just as important. I often photograph the northern lights around my home in Fairbanks, Alaska. Often the moon, stars, or aurora itself, are sufficient to illuminate the foreground, but at times, it fades to black as you can see below.
In such cases, a splash of light is just what I need. When photographing the aurora, or the night sky in general, I rarely carry an actual flash, but I’m always wearing a headlamp. During a typical 5-10 second exposure, if I need a little extra texture or warmth, I can pan the beam quickly over the foreground, “painting” it with light as I did in this image.
Light from a typical LED is very cool, but cover it with CTO gel, and nice warm tones result. Light painting is a popular technique, but one that requires some practice to make sure your subject is evenly lit, and not too bright. Mixing light painting and ambient can be very effective to even out brightness in an image, and compensate for highlights. In Argentina, a few years ago, I was shooting a historic farmhouse during the late evening. Bright porch lights on the house needed to be evened out, so I painted some key parts of the scene.
A warning: painting light can mess with the color of a digital image. If you use your camera’s automatic settings, as I do, light painted images will often require some color correction in post-processing. Shoot in RAW to be sure you retain this flexibility.
Flash can also play an important role in wildlife photography. Birds in particular are often down low in dark forests, where natural sunlight is rarely found. The flat, boring light beneath the foliage can be replaced by the directional light of a flash.
When using flash with a long telephoto, you can often get away with on-camera, or bracket-mounted flash, as I did of the portrait of the American Robin above. Using camera-mounted flash is easy with TTL (Through The Lens) compatible strobes. In fact, this technique is so easy, that I’m not even going to go into it, because more interesting possibilities exist.
Where I live in Alaska, the winters are long, and during the few hours of daylight, the sun is often hidden behind trees or clouds. The birds I love to photograph are usually stuck in flat, gray light. There are a few trees in my yard that the birds prefer. By setting up a flash (or two), gelled with CTO to emulate the absent sun, I’ve managed to create some well lit portraits of these guys.
The method is similar to lighting a landscape. You’ve got to choose your flash placement to avoid shadows, and since there is rarely a chance to replicate a poorly exposed shot, it’s best to get your settings right and then leave them in place throughout the shoot. In this case, I was going for an almost studio-like look, so I took advantage of the white snow as a background, making the final image appear almost as a cut-out.
I like to put my flashes atop a tall stand to get them over my head like a low angle sun. Done right, the set up and exposure takes only a few moments, and the results can be great.
Artificial light in the outdoors offers a great opportunity to create unique images. Think through your shots, consider where extra light can be added, and what role it will play in the final image. Not every situation requires it, in fact, most don’t. But there are times when that extra pop of light can take a photo from mundane to extraordinary.
Have you tried using flash with your nature or landscape photography? Please share your tips and images in the comments below.
is a professional writer, photographer, and workshop leader based in Fairbanks, Alaska. His images and writing on photography, natural history, and science have appeared in hundreds of articles in more than 50 publications around the globe. Dave offers multi-day summer and winter photography workshops in Alaska and abroad. He is currently accepting sign ups for affordable photo workshops in Alaska, Africa, and South America. Find out more HERE .
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