…a little flash, that is. Often, at least for the photo, that is enough, like in the image above. Here, colleague Kristof positioned the couple in the tall grass. But to get the shot, I needed a little flash to light up the couple – if I had used just ambient, the yellow fall colours behind them would have been lost. Direct flash is OK for this if you have to.

For this, since the flash is just adding a little fill light, you can use a Flash Exposure Compensation (Flash Exp Comp) setting of -1 to -2 stops.

Careful though:

• Canon cameras using TTL will do this by themselves if they detect enough ambient light to “guess” that you are using fill flash.
• On Nikon cameras, if you use Exp Comp, that also sets Flash Exp Comp.

Often, those small engineering decisions, largely undocumented, can make your life difficult.

Oh – and you also need a little love in life. Ask the happy couple above!