Getting rid of harsh shadows

[Abhishek Srivastava]

So I am a wannabe photographer. but I when traveling with family its hard for me to step out in the golden hours. (as children are hungry or sleeping at that time). So most of the photography happens at the time when there is strong sun in the sky which leads to very hard shadows on the face and body. I did some research and tried to offset this by using an off camera flash. But it's not working the photos still come out with very strong shadows. (example attached. I purchased a Godox 860 vii which is a strong flash but its still not able to compensate for the shadow and also leaves a very metallic finish on the subject. 

What can I do? I read that people are able to compensate for the sunlight by using strobes. 

 

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[glospete]

If you edit your photos in a programme such as Adobe Lightroom you can use the Shadow slider to boost detail in the shadows. Particularly if you shoot using RAW your will see an amazing difference. 

[itchy shutter finger]

I think you are closer to success than you think. Based on your sample photo, I would reduce the exposure to darken the background to where it looks like dusk, and place the flash closer to the subject. The rule of thumb is to expose for the background and flash for the subject. When shooting in sunlight, I'll go a step further and say underexpose the sunlit background to gain control over the sun, then introduce the amount of flash necessary to make the subject as bright as you want it.

I shot the sample below at three in the afternoon of a very sunny day. The white building in the upper left was so bright I could barely open my eyes. I set the shutter speed to flash sync of 1/180, and the aperture at f8. The flash was about four feet to the right of the subject set to 1/8 power. I apologize for the small size of the sample; I had to crop it to meet the file size limit. The full size image is really quite dramatic. 

For the stark difference in reality and the image, this technique is pretty easy to do, and for me, composing this type of image is fun and rewarding.

Keep trying - you are almost there!

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