Hi Sheila. I don't know much. Since I have got a digital camera, I can manually bracket way up and down both sides of an exposure suggested by the camera metering, and do it for free, and review the shots and see what nearly works. There's a 3 shot bracket mode built in, but for specific harsh lighting like this photo, this will not be enough, you would need to underexpose 75% of the content of this shot to get the detail back in the faces. And if you are shooting film you will need to guess hard for spontaneous shots like this. Either close the aperture more OR speed up the shutter. But the camera is easily fooled so you have to take over.
Thanks Martin! The camera that I used for this shot is definitely not my camera of choice. It's just a point and shoot, so there's not much control over it. I just happened to have it in my bag on this particular day so I took a few shots while we were out, just for fun.
If I were using my SLR camera, then would I want to adjust the f-stop and shutter speed to about -1 or -2 to correct for the bright light? I think I could have much better focus on their faces with the SLR too.
Thanks for your help. Your photos are beautiful, by the way.
Nice subject matter, nice composition with good subject/background contrast. The focus is a little off, and the sunlight is too bright to allow the detail in the face to show. Manually control that camera. Let less light in somehow. Everything else will be darker, but the overlit faces will be better controlled.