Fill/Balance

Our next assignment, amidst the craziness that is CPOY, was our Fill/Balance assignment. Fill uses our handheld flashes to fill in the shadows. Rita uses a great example. If you had to photograph the shootout at the OK Corral, all you would get would be cowboy with shadowy faces. Their hats black out any light. We can fix that by popping some flash in there, emphasis on some. Too much looks bad, makes the photo flat and the lighting ratio is not believable. Turning down the flash makes a better photo.
The other part of the assignment is balance. This is where we balance the light inside, with the light outside. Often, when you see picture that are taken inside a dark place, anything outside, through any windows in the frame, is incredibly blown out. You expose for the inside, which is way to low for the light outside, so you loose any detail out the window (assuming you want what's out there. Blowing out the windows is a widely used technique, it can be very dramatic). You can fix that by exposing for the window light, and then using your flash to bring the inside to within a reasonable lighting ratio. Below is an example. While not the best, due my running around all crazy, and having overcast "soft-box days". The lighting ratio was not to drastic to begin with, but you can see that the inside, and out, are exposed near correct.

Photo © Jason Lenhart