Fill flash adds light on the foreground subjects when the background is significantly brighter.
Giraffe towers over the jeep during a ride through the savannahs outside Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge (© Michael Maher).
Giraffe towers over the jeep during a ride through the savannahs outside Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge (© Michael Maher).
Vacationing
at Walt Disney World, we elected to go on a jeep ride through the savannahs surrounding
the Animal Kingdom Lodge, so we could see animals like giraffes, zebras, and ostriches
up close. It was easy to photograph the
animals alone, for they came very close to our jeep, but because we were not
allowed to venture out of the vehicle, there was no way to photograph the individuals
in our party together with the animals.
I tried several shots of us inside the jeep in the foreground with zebras
and giraffes in the near background, but the animals were much more brightly
lit than our faces, making the people almost too dark to be recognizable. The solution was to use my flash and to illuminate
everyone’s faces so they would have just as much light on them as the
animals. When we passed a group of
giraffes (called a “tower”), the jeep stopped and I added the fill flash to take several photos of the
majestic animals in the background with our happy and perfectly lit subjects in
the foreground.
Three Tips
1) Fill flash provides extra light on
the foreground subject to match the background lighting.
2) Set your camera to expose the
brighter background and fire the flash to light up the foreground subject.
3) Use fill flash for most
of your outdoor portraits to make your subjects’ faces as perfectly lit as
possible.
