When you go on a vacation trip, you would end up taking maximum outdoor shots than indoors. If you're a photo freak and love to capture the essence of the city you're touring in its entirety, you would in most likeliness capture portraits outdoors. A beautiful Spanish girl would add more value to the cityscape of Madrid than a perspective shot of its most visited lane. But most often what happens is users don’t exploit the fill flash or flash on mode in digital cameras. If you want to have control over your shots, you need to have control over your camera flash so that it goes on exactly when you want to and not take commands on its own. Knowing how to use the flash feature the right way is your ticket to capturing great outdoor shots.

When you're taking a shot with the flash on, the camera exposes for the background first, after which it adds just enough flash to illuminate your subject (in this case portrait). So if your subject is the about-to-be-married bride with the church acting as the backdrop, you need to ensure she stands in the shade and the fill flash works in combination with sunlight to expose the bride as well as the church. In this way, you have a professional shot with all the elements in your composition looking good.

In the picture shown above, for example, the fill on flash was used to ensure the young lady as well as the background, are properly exposed.

Once you have achieved this bit, you can try various stunts with your camera's flash. You can capture the essence of your subject in the way that you have pictured—capture her hair or her eyes or her long legs and use the camera's flash to experiment with these objectives of yours. Get her to stand in a way that the sun illuminates her hair from the sides or focus on her eyes. Taking these shots under direct sunlight is not advisable. You need to position yourself as well as your subject in areas where the flash can play tango with the sun. So a shady area would be ideal and would prevent your subject from showing that undesirable squint. In the end, you have the expression you had wanted to capture!

Note that you need to stand as close as possible from your subject as most built-in camera flashes support a range of 10 feet or sometimes even less.