This invention has as its object to precisely detect the face of a person from a captured image even in a situation with an insufficient brightness (e.g., when an image of a person is to be photographed to have a nightscape as a background). To this end, an image capturing apparatus detects, on the basis of a captured image based on pre-light emission, a face area in the captured image, determines a light control area of a flash in the captured image including an object in accordance with the detected face area, calculates a main light emitting amount in accordance with a photometry value based on the pre-light emission in the determined light control area, and photographs an image by controlling the flash on the basis of the calculated main light emitting amount.