How to do Subtle Off-Camera Flash Outdoors

Flash Photography  •  Lighting  •  Photography Tips

Using flash outdoors can be confusing for many – especially beginner photographers. A quite common question that people ask is, “Why to use flash outdoors when the light is already sufficient?”. While the question might sound logical, the reason is purely for artistic and aesthetic reasons. We’ll see how that works in today’s video. Professional wedding photographer Jiggie Alejandrino takes you behind the scenes of one of his engagement shoots and demonstrates how you can create a subtle and elegant light with just a single flash:

One important thing that everyone needs to understand is that we don’t use flash just to compensate for the shortage of ambient light, or to overpower the ambient light. For instance, Alejandrino’s idea of using flash outdoors is to fill the shadows formed by ambient light and to make the subjects stand out from their environment.

In the video, Alejandrino first shares an image of the couple that he took using just the ambient light. As you can see, the image appears bland with the subjects blending into the busy background.

The solution to making the couple stand out is not that complicated either. He simply underexposed the background by 1-stop and used his flash to add a bit of highlight to the couple. And as you can clearly see in the video, the difference is day and night apart.

In the latter case, since the subjects appear slightly brighter than the surrounding, our attention is drawn directly toward them. And as you can notice, there are no unnecessary and distracting shadows on them either. All of this by using a subtle amount of flash only.

“All I did was really just add a light towards their face to remove the shadows.”

And as Alejandrino explains towards the end of the video, it is not essential that you underexpose your ambient light. Even with the correct metering, you can use a subtle amount of flash to make your subject pop.

If you’re starting out with portrait or wedding photography and want to get your hands dirty with outdoor flash photography, we highly encourage you to watch this complete video. The difference you’ll see will surely make you want to learn more about this technique.