Let me talk about balance, again. Balancing flash and ambient light.

Here’s how my thinking goes:

1. Bright pixels are sharp pixels.
2. So the main subject of your photo should be brighter than the background.
3. So you expose for the background by making it two stops below “normal” exposure for ambient light. That gives you good saturation, too.
4. Then you light the main subject with extra lights (use your flash meter: see yesterday’s post).

Like this:

Which gives you this:

That’s straight out of the camera. To do this you need:

• Camera, in manual mode
• Light meter
• Light – in sunlight, probably a strobe powered by battery
• Stands pocketwizards, cables, small materials

Easy, and you can use speedlights too when the sun is not too bright. The principle is the balancing of the background light with the flash light, where the background is darker by 1-2 stops.

I teach this during my workshops – it is easy to learn and I urge you all to make the effort!