Shooting towards the low sun - How do you tackle it?

[Stagecoach]

This week I have been playing on the beach at sunset with the specific aim of;

Capturing interesting MOVEMENT of people with the setting sun behind them

My intention has been to produce images for which the subjects are silhouetted and I have been experimenting with exposure and what these various camera exposures allow me to do in PP.

Whilst it is very easy to place a camera on a tripod and expose (bracket, manual etc) to ensure you will have at least one decent result for a static scene it becomes another ball game when hand holding, capturing moving subjects when you only get one chance of capturing that movement.

So, my question is, what do you do from experience with respect to Exposure to tackle a scene such as the one below ?



Note : I have upped the shadows/exposure from the bottom to horizon in this example in PP.

Grahame

[Donald]

A reverse hard-edge GND filter; i.e. the dark bit in the centre and graduating towards the top.

[Stagecoach]

A reverse hard-edge GND filter; i.e. the dark bit in the centre and graduating towards the top.

I also use GNDs at times Donald but have found that when your subjects are moving around and you are continually re-composing they can be a pain to adjust.

But even with GNDs, whilst this will narrow the DR the best exposure has to be decided.

Grahame

[Mike Buckley]

I would think using a graduated filter when hand holding a camera and moving it around considerably to capture scenes such as this one would be impractical most of the time.

Instead, I would take test photos with exposures that blow the highlights in the sun but don't blow the other highlights. I would use the blinkies to determine that. During post-processing, I would introduce color into the sun by sampling color adjacent to the sun and applying at a very low opacity.

EDIT: I used that technique on the photo shown below. It was close enough to a silhouette that I could have made it a silhouette during post-processing. Instead, I went the opposite direction and lifted the pertinent tones.

[Donald]

Apologies. I missed the point about subjects moving around and continually having to re-compose

[Stagecoach]

Mike, I have been using both the histogram and blinkies to form some sort of conclusion and think I'm getting there, which is also based upon what I can do in PP to achieve the image I want.

To date, my impression is that if I control things to limit the blinkies to a round area within the sun and disregard any specular highlights on the water reflections I can almost pull what I want out of the shadow areas.

[Stagecoach]

Apologies. I missed the point about subjects moving around and continually having to re-compose

No need for apologies Donald.