When you use the flash outside, you can get much better lighting on people’s faces.

You can see the difference between these two photos. I demonstrated this technique to the YWAM School of Photography class in Kona, Hawaii, a few years ago. I shot this broad so you can see how the assistant must walk with the people and stay slightly ahead but close to them.

Here, I cropped out the assistant, which, when I shoot a job, I have them out of the frame, so I do not have to crop. Hopefully, you can see how the lighting is helping the photo here.

I showed how to do this with hot shoe flashes and studio strobes. The advantage of the giant strobe was the ability to stay farther away from the subject due to a much more powerful strobe.

Before walking and talking, I showed the class how a fill flash-off camera works. Here, there is no flash, and the subject is backlighted.

Here, I could shoot at a faster shutter speed of 1/8000 using the hot shoe flash-off camera due to the HSS [High-Speed Shutter] technology now available for most cameras. This let me darken the sky quite a bit.

I have found that getting the sun behind the subject allows the subject to stop squinting. Then, by adding the flash off the camera, the light creates some modeling of the face and lights up the front.

For the “Walk and Talk,” I ask subjects to stay very close to each other. I even say you should feel the other person touching you every once in a while. I also ask them to make eye contact. I generally have one person talk, and the other person listens.

Try this technique sometimes with your subjects. If you like, you can hire me to work with you or your group to teach this in a workshop.