Feedback on sun/back-lit images

kdotaylor

I've seen lots of photos lately of back-lit images. I took some photos this past weekend of a family at sunset.....I feel like detail is lost when the images are lit like this. What do you all think?
#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

divamum

These are great! Given the exposures, I'm assuming you used fill flash? If you DIDN'T use fill, then you've done a very VERY good job of getting tons of detail in their faces!!

It looks to me more like a processing issue, since the exposures look really good on this monitor - I'd dial back the brightness and/or raise your black point ever so slightly - they all look just a teensy bit hot to me.

PS I'd lose #5 - that one patch of bright sun is distracting. It is SUCH a cute expression - but the sun patch is a problem. I've sometimes cloned/patched things like that (takes forever, but it works) to save a shot. YMMV.

Qarik

well I think you are overexposed to begin with 1-5 by maybe 1/2 stop. Then on top of that you have the extreme back lighting which is blowing out hair and foreheads. You have take down the highlights quite bit. Actaully what I would do is bring the whole image down maybe 1.5 stops and then dodge the subject up about 1 stop and put a vignette on it. The BG are just distractingly bright. Also I would clean up that gnat cloud and a few of the grass blades in that 1st shot (I like the comp in that shot the best)

tsardoc

I think back light does take some of the sheen of the details which is more evident in the pics 1,2 and 3. But that is not true of 5,6 and 7. They look great.