Getting a decent portrait shot when you are outside in the middle of the day can be pretty tough. Bright summer sunshine can seem like the perfect light for shooting outdoors, but it often causes horrible shadows across the face and not to mention the model will quite often be squinting their eyes.

Using a flash that has HSS (High speed sync) ability, means you can often overpower the ambient light and/or fill the shadows in.

A built in flash on your camera can normally only shoot at a maximum of 1/250th of a second, whereas with HSS you can shoot at up to 1/8000th.

When using HSS flash and having your camera set on manual or shutter priority, you can expose for the face & have the background nice and dark.

For this shoot in Les Bois, Chamonix with Claudia, I was using my Nikon D750 in manual mode so I had full control of all the settings with a Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 lens and a yongnuo YN560 flash with YN603 remotes. It was a slightly cloudy day which was really nice as there was not too much in the way of direct sunlight.

It can be quite tough when you are starting out doing portraiture as you often get stuck with not being able to direct your subject in the way you want. Practice, practice practice! Shoot from lots of different angles and have your model/friend/friend of a friend/willing person from a Facebook message you sent out. to look up, look down, drop a shoulder, sit down, smile look away. As I said before, practice and you will get there.

A huge thank you to the lovely Claudia for letting me get some shots of her.