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Generally, in situations where a person or subject is standing in relative shadow, or without light in front of them, and standing in front of a very bright or backlit background or with light coming from behind them, you have a few different ways to try to approach it:
1. Meter for the subject - switch to spot meter, put the crosshairs on the subject's face, let the background blow out bright and white, and get the detail in the subject you need.
2. Meter the background, in which you get the results you posted - the background looks normal, the subject is in silhouette.
3. Meter in between - using the spot meter, or setting the aperture and shutter, find something in between the background and foreground - using the spot meter, you can fish around the outer edge of your subject so that the meter sees half shadow and half light - or find a lighter area like a white shirt that's in less shadow - this will give you a slightly blown out bright background and a slightly silhouetted subject. From there, you can often post process to bring up the shadows on the subject for a better exposure, or use the camera's dynamic range function (DLighting, DRO, etc) to correct the shadows in camera.
4. Shoot for HDR - take a burst of at least 2 or 3 shots using the EV bracketing function (best to take the shots in a burst, very quickly together, so there is little subject movement between frames) or if you have a camera with built-in HDR stacking, use it. This will take 1 shot exposed for the background, one for the middle, and one for the shadowed subject, then blend the three together for a proper exposure on both darker subject and brighter background.
5. Use a flash for fill light. Setting the flash control in camera to 'fill', then metering the scene as normal, the camera will meter the background just like it did in your shot, but the flash will also fire to provide light to the front of the subject, making them better exposed as well. Fill flash sometimes may take some getting used to, so you don't have an overly artificial light on the subject - learning how to throttle down the flash a little if necessary would be good.
Just a few different ways to approach such a shot!
_________________ Justin Miller
Sony DSLR-A580 / Sony 18-250mm / Minolta 50mm F1.7 / Sigma 30mm F1.4 / Tamron 10-24mm / Tamron 200-500mm / Tamron 90mm F2.8 macro / Minolta 300mm F4 APO
Sony NEX5N / 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 / 55-210mm F4-6.3 / Pentax K adapter / Konica K/AR adapter / bunches o' Konica & Pentax lenses!
Galleries:
http://www.pbase.com/zackiedawg
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