The New Photographer

I lug my trusty Canon IXUS v3 with me every where. It's forever in my bag. I take snaps indoors restaurants, in lecture halls during lectures, in my kitchen, of food, and of friends when outdoors. Problem is, for outdoor shots, my subjects usually appear as a silhouette against a brightly lit background. A useful technique to counter the problem, is to employ the use of fill-in flash.

So what is it that causes the camera to under expose the foreground subject, which results in the silhouette effect? Like the human eye, the camera, when 'seeing' a brightly lit light, will 'squint.' For humans, the pupils are constricted to allow less light into the eye, while for cameras, the aperture size is adjusted smaller. As the aperture closes, less light enters the image sensor, causing the foreground to appear darker than the background.

Fill-in flash is used to soften dark areas in the foreground, against a brightly lit background. When shooting under fill-in flash mode, the camera is forced to flash a short burst of light while the shutter opens, illuminating the foreground when the photo is taken. This eliminates the silhouette effect, bringing life to the subject.

Also try, as far as possible, always to take shots that has natural lighting shining on your subject's front.