Blown out sky

[naeno]

I took these at the beach the other day and love the kids expressions, but the completely blown out sky is driving me crazy. Everything I've tried hasn't been right. Any suggestions?





EXIF for both
Shutter 1/80
Aperture f11.0
Focal Length 40mm
ISO 200

[ToPpS]

It's always going to be hard to get both the kids and the sky exposed properly. If you take the above shots you've already used a bit of "flash fill" to brighten the kids up a notch? Am i right?

You could try meter for the background and then set the flash to "rear curtain".... that should allow the background to be properly exposed and the flash should light up the kids....

Or you could purposely over expose the backgroud and do some "high key" shots??? Do fight it, use what you have and work with it.

[Mr Guy]

Are you asking how to correct it now in photoshop, or what to do in the future?

In the future, a polarizing filter may help.

For now, did you shoot in RAW? You may be best off doing a sort of HDR approach where you adjust the raw for the sky and create an image to use for the background layer and then adjust the exposure for the kids in over top and mask out the blown out sky in the top layer.

[his4ever]

I use a off camera flash and "meeter the flash" (when I remember). That usally helps. When all else fails, I use pictures of clouds I have taken before and then edit the clouds to match the mood of the picture. For an example look here:
http://www.stonecafecreations.com/si...les-photoshoot

All the pictures with clouds, are actually clouds added in (one of them you can really tell... but only if you are looking)

[naeno]

Thanks to all for their responses.

When I wrote it, I was actually wondering how to fix it in pp (I realized after posting I probably put it in the wrong category). However, it's very good to know what techniques I can use in the future since I really like the pose and the kids had fun!

I went back in and increased the blue channel through curves, masked out the kids and dad, and came up with this and this. The change is subtle, but I think it does make a bit of a difference. I would probably dodge the brighter areas if I were to do it again.

[NolanC]

Why not just dump the current blown out sky all together !
and replace it with a nice properly exposed sky shot, through post processing.

Just a thought.

[wannabehorsephotographer]

The good news is that it looks like your sky isn't actually blown, just really light colored. You could try a multitude of things in post work. I like just burning in the background or the RAW suggestion above. Here's link to some flash/sky stuff I tried awhile back:
Keeping a brilliant blue sky without a polarizer