Use the fill flash to brighten the dark shadows

The ubiquitous built-in flash on digital cameras ranging from drugstore disposables to professional rigs from Nikon and Canon are good for one thing in common: Shooting pictures in bright sunlight. As oxymoronic as that may seem, there's method in the moron.

On sunny days, subjects often wear wide-bill hats that cast deep shadows on their faces—particularly on their eyes, which are invariably the most telling feature in a portrait. Have them take off the hats, and they squint in such an ugly way, you'd prefer their eyes were hidden. So, it's back on with the hats, and you wind up with a photo that looks like this.

That's when fill flash steps in. Fill flash does exactly what its name suggests. The flash fills in the dark shadows while it does not noticeably lighten the already sunlit portions of the photo.

The best thing about fill flash is it often requires no elaborate preparation beyond making sure your flash is turned on. If your subject enjoys staring wide-eyed into the sun, the added burst of light from the flash goes unnoticed. I've known many newspaper photographers who often get only one shot at a photo and can't take chances. They only rarely take a photo without using a flash.

Of course, not all flash attachments are mounted directly over the lens. Nor to the side, a much more preferable location. Photographers who are into macro photography—shooting extreme close-ups of extremely small subjects, such as June bugs and cavity-ridden molars—often use special flash units, called ring flash or macro flash, that let them illuminate their subjects without their lenses blocking their view. The flashes are either based on the same xenon gas arrangement from earlier in this chapter or consist of dozens of bight LEDs. In either case, they are designed to encircle the lens, putting the lights within inches of the subject. When it comes to June bugs, red eye is not a consideration.  

Techniques of using cameras flashes