Sometimes you’ll want to isolate a subject in open shade by lighting her up while rendering portions of your bright background dark. For example, I was photographing a young model named Emily Carlson at seven fifteen in the morning near New York City’s Brooklyn Bridge Park. I captured the first photograph with 100% natural light. If we take a close look at the overall scene, it is clear that Emily was in open shade and the distant background was in full sun. I wanted front-to-back sharpness, so I chose an aperture of f/16. Because I set a correct exposure for Emily, f/16 for 1/30 sec. at ISO 200, the background of full sun results in an overexposure. For the second photograph, I set a correct exposure for the background, f/16 for 1/200 sec., and just about everything in the open shade went dark, including Emily. But all of this black, underexposed area was actually a good thing, as you are about to see.

I called upon my flash, the Nikon SB-900. I dialed in f/16 on the back of my flash, and it indicated a flash-to-subject distance of 7.7 feet based on my use of ISO 200 and a flash-head zoom setting of 24mm. I attached the flash to a hot-shoe cord, which allowed me to hold the flash a bit high and to the left of the camera. With my flash exposure set, it would be a correct flash exposure as long as I pressed the shutter release when Emily was between 7 and 8 feet from the flash. But before doing that, I needed to determine what kind of ambient, natural-light exposure I wanted to record. The ambient exposure is controlled by both aperture and shutter speed, so it is fair to say that at f/16 for 1/200 sec., I would record only distant sunlight of the sky and the light on the bridge and none of the much dimmer light of the open shade. As Emily walked toward me, and just before she reached that 7- to 8-foot distance, she put her head down and then quickly tossed it back up. As her head turned upward, hair and all, the flash fired and recorded her hair “standing on end” against the dark and welcome contrast of a severely underexposed background of open shade.

Exposing for the subject made the background too light.
24–85mm lens at 24mm, f/16 for 1/30 sec.

Exposing for the background left the subject too dark.
24–85mm lens at 24mm, f/16 for 1/200 sec.

Using flash, I lit the subject against a high-contrast background.
24–85mm lens at 24mm, f/16 for 1/30 sec. with Nikon SB-900 flash