how to shoot pictures with the sun behind your subjects

As the sun is getting lower in the evening it’s time for a beautiful shot in the golden fields. I don’t want the full light from the sun to come fully and directly into my camera. So, I use part of the subject’s body to block a portion of the sun, until I like how it looks. Here are my manual settings that I used on this shot.

My manual settings:
ISO – 250 (out in full sun, but sun is getting lower)
aperture – 4.0 (wanted to get all four people sharp and wanted to see some detail in the fields)
shutter speed – 1/500 second (adjusting to make the exposure right)
lens – 50mm 1.2L