Hey Lucy,

I definitely use flash outdoors at times - though usually for shooting humans as we get shadows over our eyes when the light from above hits our foreheads. This is particularly true when it is very bright outside and I am trying to take in both the subject and a background scene (such as a landscape).

While this is not a hard and fast rule, I find that I often use the flash at or near it's highest power to help knock out the shadows (as you are competing with the sun to get the midtones). This makes metering a bit hard - and sometimes the light a little less flattering than you might want, and you may sometimes lose some highlight detail, but that is the way it goes.

Common sense dictates to attempt to photograph when it is not so harshly lit, but, LOL, I guess we cannot always control when our clients want to shoot. :P


James