Over the weekend, we did a sunset snorkeling adventure and ended our evening on a deserted beach. It felt as if we reached the end of the world.

What would you do if you felt like you’d reached the end of the world?

We felt like flying!

Photo Recipe for all you recipe lovers! How did I capture this back lit shot at sunset?

This is an image that is tough to shoot unless your willing to shoot in Manuel. If you are, good for you! Manuel isn’t as scary as people make it out to be! Learn more about it in our Beyond the Green Box DVD , as well as these fun steps below!

First things first! I dropped my ISO down to 200 for rich color saturation. I tried an ISO at 100 but I needed a bit more light since it was sunset, so I had to bump up to 200.

Instead of having a wide open aperture, like I normally do, my F-stop was 7.1. Brian and I often shoot at a 2.8 F-stop or lower b/c we love that yummy, buttery blurred background feel. But I didn’t want the background blurred for this shot. I wanted some detail in the islands, the longtail boat floating off to the side, the patterns in the sand and the soft waves rolling in and out. A higher f-stop gives me more detail for all these things.

Now the Manuel part. I haven’t set my Shutter Speed yet b/c I use the light meter scale inside the camera to tell me where to set it at. But in this case, the scale is going to be blinking off the chart in the positive side b/c my camera thinks I have way to much light. Why would that be?

The first step was to meter on the kids to see how SLOW my shutter speed needed to be to illuminate them without blasting out the background that they would be running to. Once I found the right shutter speed (by bringing that pointer on the scale to 0-1), I can reframe and shoot the image I want. But I have to remember that my light meter will freak out when I reframe b/c it will pick up on the intense sunset light and think I need less light, thus, a faster shutter speed. But what would happen if I sped up my shutter speed?

If you guessed silhouette your right! For this shot, I didn’t want a silhouette, I wanted the kids to glow instead of be dark. I really wanted the kids to have that yellow, back lit glow.

If your reading this and still wondering where your light meter scale (or Exposure Compensation Scale) is in your camera, look through your viewfinder as if your going to take a picture, and you’ll see the scale at the bottom of the frame. Adjust your Shutter Speed, and you’ll see the pointer move up or down the scale. Voila! If you love back lit “glowing” type images but don’t know how to capture them, you better check out our Discovery Workshop in San Fran the first weekend of May! We’ll be doing a “hands on” Focus Group designated to Back Lit images! Read all about it here! To register, CLICK HERE!

“xtra! xtra!” Photo Coaching Tip while we’re at it!

I had the kids stand still while I metered on them, and then when I said “GO!” I let them take off and fly. We did this two or three times until I had the metering where I wanted it–and caught the kids at the distance I was envisioning. I had asked them to start behind me and run past me while I shoot away, but by the time they went past me they were drifting to far apart. So it worked better to have them start running side by side–in front of me. We all had fun doing these shots for our own reasons, and I quit when I noticed they were sick of it. 🙂 It’s always important to know when to quit as a mom with the camera. Don’t want your kids resenting you in their old age! 🙂

Give me some feedback from my beginning shooters, was this photo recipe to technical?

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Register for our Upcoming Discovery Workshop ! Ladies Only! CLICK HERE to get your spot!