Help with outdoor shooting and dark eyes

Im after some help please.

I was out on saturday, visiting a house, and had some lovely gardens. Took my camera with me, and thought would get some photos of my kids.

It was about 3pm in the afternoon, and lovely sunny day.

I had a nightmare photographing them. I had the sun over my right sholder, crouched down to eye level.

Evey photo i took tho had lovely skin tone colours, but dark shadow eye area. I tried to get them to look up a bit, but that ment they had to squint there eyes.

I know a reflector card would help, but its something i dont really want to be carrying about all the time, and would look silly taking photos like this are a public house like this.
thinking about it, i could of put my speedlight on the carmera and used as a fill flash?

Or is there any other way to not get the dark/shadow eyes?

Thank you

"i could of put my speedlight on the carmera and used as a fill flash"

Exactly what you should do.

i know it's not a great solution but i just tend to tweak the exposure and over-expose slightly to help with this. my view is that it isn't the end of the world if a blurry background is a little blown out if the person who is the subject is captured better. jmo. would care to hear better ways myself.

twinkle_2k86 wrote in post #15854224
Im after some help please.

I was out on saturday, visiting a house, and had some lovely gardens. Took my camera with me, and thought would get some photos of my kids.

It was about 3pm in the afternoon, and lovely sunny day.

I had a nightmare photographing them. I had the sun over my right sholder, crouched down to eye level.

Evey photo i took tho had lovely skin tone colours, but dark shadow eye area. I tried to get them to look up a bit, but that ment they had to squint there eyes.

I know a reflector card would help, but its something i dont really want to be carrying about all the time, and would look silly taking photos like this are a public house like this.
thinking about it, i could of put my speedlight on the carmera and used as a fill flash?

Or is there any other way to not get the dark/shadow eyes?

Thank you

Yes, use your flash. I use my speedlights for every outdoor shoot on a sunny day unless it's early in the morning or late in the evening.

twinkle_2k86 wrote in post #15854224
I know a reflector card would help, but its something i dont really want to be carrying about all the time, and would look silly taking photos like this are a public house like this.

Ha you may look ridiculous whatever method you use to get the best shot but who will be the loser when they come to your house and have to ask you how you got that awesome shot and you say "remember when you said i looked silly taking that picture..."

If you're shooting natural light your subject should be facing open sky and not the sun. I always have the sun in my face and not the clients. Also around that time Im usually looking for open shade and not really shooting full sun around that time unless its at the beach.

reflectors are your friends. Use them to fill in the shadows under the eyes. get your children involved in helping you. make it fun for them.

also speedlites will help like people above mentioned, but reflectors are cheaper!

Fill flash is your friend. Reflectors are nice, but they limit the amount of fill available to you as well as being bulky and hard to manage without an assistant. WIth a fill flash you have much greater ability to manage the ambient and still get light in the subject's eyes.

^also true.

you can try positioning them near a wall or something that will provide the fill for you if you don't want to carry anything else but your camera. Also having them in different head positions to get the fill in the eyes near a reflected object should help.