How to Use Flash to Shoot Better Portraits in the Sun

Shooting with a wide aperture for portraits with a shallow depth of field is a highly popular look, but when you are photographing in the sun with flash, you can run into impossible-to-solve exposure issues — impossible until you introduce some new techniques. This helpful video tutorial will show how to deal with strong sun in outdoor portrait situations to produce better images. 

Coming to you from Jay P. Morgan with The Slanted Lens, this helpful video tutorial will show you three techniques for shooting portraits outside with flash. The problem generally arises when you begin to use wider apertures to produce a shallow depth of field effect and to isolate your subject. Normally, in this situation, you would drop your ISO as low as possible and use a faster shutter speed to compensate for the wide aperture and bright ambient light, but when you add in flash, you will frequently discover that the flash sync speed of your camera simply is not fast enough to prevent the background from being blown out. Luckily, there are a few ways around this, one of the most convenient being high-speed sync. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Morgan. 

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Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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