The effect of a shadow created on the background of a subject by emitted light from a strobe is suppressed. To accomplish this so, a shadow created by strobe light emission is detected and the shadow is eliminated. Alternately, the size of shadow created by strobe light emission is previously evaluated using the distance between the camera lens and strobe X0, the distance to the subject L1, and the distance to the background L2 and a warning is given if necessary. This allows the elimination of the shadow created by strobe light emission or allows compositional arrangement change when a large shadow is expected due to strobe light emission. Therefore, undesired shadow due to strobe light emission is suppressed. Shadow suppression is particularly useful for photographs for photo IDs. It can be also applicable to corrections of some features on the picked up image caused by strobe light emission.