pictures in the sun and shade

Taking pics in the sun and the shade are sometimes tricky. This first picture below was taken with all of the kids in the shade (mostly…my little nephew on the far right got caught in a bit of sun) but the tricky part is that the sun is bright in the background of the picture. When you take a picture like this you have to be careful to expose the kids faces enough so that they’re bright enough and not too dark. The reason being is that I have found often that the camera exposes for the bright sun in the background and not for your subjects. So you just have to pay attention to it and make sure their faces are bright enough. If I hadn’t been photographing five wiggly kids then I wouldn’t changed my angle, perhaps moved my body so that I didn’t have such a bright contrasting background. But the kids all sat there and I would have lost them if I would have moved them so I shot it there. And I’m glad I did. I like it. :)

My manual settings for this shot below:
ISO – 250 (partial shade)
aperture – F 4.5 (multiple wiggly kids so I don’t trust 2.5 or 2.8 etc)
shutter speed – 1/160 of a second (again multiple wiggly kids, so I need a somewhat fast shutter speed)
lens – 50mm 1.2 lens

This picture below was shot in full sun. Full sun at mid-day is not my favorite but I still wanted to capture the moments as they were and not move all the kids to full shade or anything. They had found this amphitheater with a stage and there were some performances about to begin. So this was the pre-performance huddle. Don’t you love it? Oh how my kids love their cousins. :)  Oh, and by the way, this huddle followed with five kids singing their VBS worship songs at the top of their lungs in the forest….and it was in the campground so I’m sure many campers were quite entertained (hopefully entertained and not annoyed!).

My manual settings for this shot below:
ISO – 250 (just hadn’t changed it since the previous shot)
aperture – F 3.2
shutter speed – 1/2000 of a second (full sun, very bright day, need a fast shutter speed so it’s not overexposed)
lens – 50mm 1.2 lens