Sigh...lighting is my worst enemy today. Help?

[TenaciousTins]

I work as a caretaker for a family with 5 autistic kids. Today we went to a park. I got some great shots. At the end, they wanted me to take a family photo. This is very hard to do with a family of 5 kids, never mind autistic kids who are very tired and want to go home and use the iPad and eat McDonalds. Then they requested that the "Lake be behind us". Ok. But the problem is, the only place they wanted to stand was in the shade, which was fine except the sun was behind us, as was the lake. I had 30 seconds (literally) before all the kids scattered to the car. Are these at all salvageable? I tried, but the background ended up looking a little too pale. These are SOOC shots.





Thanks! I think next time I should insist on taking the pic where I want to, as there were lots of places to stand that would have been perfect without the sun behind us, but the lake also wouldn't have been behind us. I should also probably have exposed it for the sun and gone from there. I was going to grab my flash but they'd already packed all my equipment in the van :/ Any ideas about what I can do next time would be welcomed!

 

[412 Burgh]

Doubt they are salvageable-- Highlights seem to be really blown. Did you shoot raw or jpeg?

 

[TenaciousTins]

For reference, this is the tree I had them stand under...only they didn't want to be on this side, so we took it on the other side...still just as bad.

 

[TenaciousTins]

Unfortunately jpeg. Shooting in RAW is something I am new at. I used to shoot in RAW all the time, using DPP to convert them, but it made it so hard to save all the originals and such. I should get over my fear of the work, and just do it.

 

[Trever1t]

Shoot raw? Yes, you exposed for the subjects, that's good. There are ways to edit and bring down the highs of the background but the blown skies are lost unless you want to get fancy with composites.

 

[412 Burgh]

Here is a quick crude edit.. the photos uploaded aren't the best quality. Despite my first post, these may be salvageable with the original files.

 

[TenaciousTins]

Thanks for the quick edit. Hmmm...I will try to attach the originals. I was hoping that photobucket would allow the originals to be the same size here.

 

[412 Burgh]

if you want you could send me an email of the originals and I'll see what I can do with them--

XXXXXX at comcast dot net

 

[TenaciousTins]

Shoot raw? Yes, you exposed for the subjects, that's good. There are ways to edit and bring down the highs of the background but the blown skies are lost unless you want to get fancy with composites.

No, I didn't shoot raw. I know. I think this has convinced me that maybe I should. I am not used to failure this bad. I only shoot as a hobby, for fun, I don't do it for money or anything. So I don't get all fancy with it because usually I don't need to for my purposes. But I think these are the worst pics I have taken! I did expose for the subjects, and when I saw the initial outcome of the pictures, I wanted to change positions and settings, but the kids had already scattered and we couldn't get them back...figures!

 

[TenaciousTins]

if you want you could send me an email of the originals and I'll see what I can do with them--

Zdiberadin at comcast dot net

Sure, I'll do that, that would be fantastic. These are just fun shots from a fun day and they've not had a family shot since the twins (the two smallest boys) were babies. I'll send you an email since I can't seem to figure out how to attach them here.

 

[412 Burgh]

Looking at the exif the photos are so bright because your ISO was set at 1,600

 

[412 Burgh]

After playing around with them-- I couldn't get anything I liked in color. So when all else fails go to black and white!

TPF Edits - a set on Flickr

 

[TenaciousTins]

Yep, black and white it will have to be then!

Yep, my ISO was at 1600...that's because I was shooting in a darker area, with the kids running around full speed, and I wanted a greater depth of field but also wanted to catch them running and playing. It worked well...except that I took (well, had) no time to change the settings here. Lesson learned! Thanks for trying!!

 

[TenaciousTins]

Thank you so much!!

 

[TenaciousTins]

This is the best I could do for color edits. Just can't get it right because, well, it's just impossible. I didn't expect these to be salvageable at all but figured I'd throw them up here for ideas and to get over my fear of posting my "bad shots" lol.