Digital Photography 101 - Portraits with Landscapes in Bright Light

Scenario : Background is lit with bright sun-light. Your subject is in the dark. You have used a large focal length(small f number) to capture the person in front and a small shutter speed to capture the background with enough details. ISO is set to lowest possible to avoid any whitewash. The result of such a scenario is shown below. The picture was taken with the following settings in a Canon SX 10 IS. F-Number -2.7, Shutter speed - 1/1600, ISO - 100.                                       

The subject is in the dark, while you have captured the background with enough details. How you do capture the subject and background with enough details and without any whitewash ?.

This is the subject of my post.

The answer to the above scenario is to use a flash in bright-light. Flash in bright light may sound counter-intuitive for the first time. This needs some explanation to understand.

By setting your shutter speed(exposure time) to a very small values(1/1600), you have saved the background from whitewash. At the same time you have reduced the amount of light from the near subject significantly. Thus, the picture shows the subject in the dark. By using flash with the same settings as above, you can capture both the subject and background as shown below

It is clear from the picture that the subject and background are well-lit. The trick is the use of flash to shed more light to the objects nearby and still capture enough details from the background without a whitewash.

Remember to turn on your flash when you have landscapes+portrait picture to capture both the landscape and the portrait without a whitewash.