MASTERCLASS: MASTERCLASS: PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography: using fill Thought your ’s flash was for use only in dark conditions? Think again. Words and images: Simon Thomas

our camera’s flash is only for Alaska, as we rode south from Dead- shooting in dark conditions, horse. I wanted a shot that showed my Yright? Wrong! bike and my bags and gear from a dif- So many people miss the opportunity ferent angle and totally covered in the to capture stunning images because mud, crap and grime of the Haul Road of difficult lighting situations, like (Dalton Highway). shooting in the direction of the sun or towards very strong backlighting. Both You’re Right, of these conditions can ruin a potential- ly powerful image. Your Camera’s Wrong But here’s the ‘heads-up’, most cam- The reason the photo works is really eras provide you the tools to combat only because I set up my flash (or speed- tough lighting conditions, it’s just many light as Nikon calls it) to trigger when I users don’t know how to use them. shot the image. On many this is Using your camera’s detachable or called ‘force flash’, because your forcing built-in flash can greatly improve your the flash to fire even when your camera chances of snagging that once in a life- thinks it isn’t needed. time shot, in spite of that awful sun glare In my camera’s menu I selected a pro- or overpoweringly bright backlight. file that offered my low contrast settings and I bumped up the saturation. Again, SIMON By The Book it’ll take a you a few minutes, but hunt If you read any fancy photographic around in your camera’s settings and Thomas book or magazine you’ll come across you’ll probably find these options are ‘fill light’. “What’s fill light?” Well, I’m available to you. Worst case scenario, Simon and Lisa Thomas glad you asked. It’s just photo speak for go and find a tutorial on your camera’s have ridden their way into using your camera’s flash to brighten settings on YouTube. a life that most of us can a foreground element of your photo only imagine. This year is that would normally be dark or even Get Flashy their 13th year on the road silhouetted because of bright backlight The flash though is the key. It allowed and in those years the duo conditions. me to manually expose the shot in has amassed an insane If you’ve ever seen a photographer order to capture some of the details in 420,000 miles on their ride Here’s the info from my Top of The World Highway Image (Dalton Highway): through 78 countries and using his or her flash in the daytime the clouds and landscape in the very six continents. Along the (you’ll see this a lot at weddings) or in bright background but, crucially, also way they’ve traversed 27 a bright situation, well, now you know the detail and texture of my bike in the deserts, survived a broken CAMERA BODY: Nikon D3 SPEED: 1/8000 SHARPENING: 6 why. foreground. neck in the Amazon Jungle, LENS: VR 16-35mm f/4G MODE: Manual CONTRAST: -1 Try this for yourself. This technique cheated death and become : 16mm EXPOSURE COMP.: -2.0EV BRIGHTNESS: 0 Flogging a DeadHorse works equally as well for shooting por- professional photographers, FOCUS MODE: Manual METERING: Matrix SATURATION: +2 The photo in this masterclass was shot traits or any other scene where you’re writers and public speakers. AF-AREA MODE: Single ISO SENSITIVITY: ISO 100 HUE: 0 directly into the sun, with my bike forced to shoot in the direction of bright www.2ridethworld.com. VR: OFF PICTURE CONTROL: [NL] NEUTRAL LOCATION: Dalton Highway, South of parked up on the Dalton Highway in light. WHO’S WRITING : f/4 BASE: [NL] NEUTRAL Deadhorse, Alaska, USA

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