How do I deal with this situation?

I've never used the GE tool on LR2; I wonder if it exists on that version (the version I have). Whenever I use the Adjustment Brush tool in Lightroom the edges don't look good, no matter how hard or soft my brush is, nor how much opacity I use I can always see spots in the edges. Love to have a Graduated Exposure tool to use when I have to.

I just did two graduated filters. The first filter I dragged over the first two on the left (increased exposure) which exposed her about right, but still left him dark, so I did another filter (increasing exposure again) just over him. I found that I had to drop saturation on the filter a tad. I also bumped up "recovery" a tad, and also "fill light" a little bit.

You're only way around this, in camera, I supposed would have been to reposition them in the available light you had, or overpowered ambient light with flash and shutter speed (i.e. to heck with uncooperative available light, and create your own dang light!)

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Thanks Doc. I downloaded the LR3 trial and it does seem to help over Aperture. It is half price now so I may go ahead and get it.

I hear you on the light. This was a bit of an awkward situation because there were about 8 other people facing them taking pictures so I couldn't interrupt everything and move them around to cater to me. In fact, there are only a couple of shots where all four people are looking at the same camera!

mckinleypics wrote in post #13982193
Thanks Doc. I downloaded the LR3 trial and it does seem to help over Aperture. It is half price now so I may go ahead and get it.

I hear you on the light. This was a bit of an awkward situation because there were about 8 other people facing them taking pictures so I couldn't interrupt everything and move them around to cater to me. In fact, there are only a couple of shots where all four people are looking at the same camera!

It is tough if 1000 others are taking shots and everybody is than looking in different direction.

mckinleypics wrote in post #13982193
I hear you on the light. This was a bit of an awkward situation because there were about 8 other people facing them taking pictures so I couldn't interrupt everything and move them around to cater to me. In fact, there are only a couple of shots where all four people are looking at the same camera!

If you had no control over the situation then what you got is as good as you might get.

At the time you may have been able to use remote flash held by a friend, but then again would you have time to set it all up.

On camera flash might have helped by bouncing the flash of the ceilling behind you and letting the camera do the calcs, check the histogram and adjust flash compensation if nessecary. You want the flash to light the ceilling as bright as poss to evenly light the scene.

john5189 wrote in post #13990728
If you had no control over the situation then what you got is as good as you might get.

At the time you may have been able to use remote flash held by a friend, but then again would you have time to set it all up.

On camera flash might have helped by bouncing the flash of the ceilling behind you and letting the camera do the calcs, check the histogram and adjust flash compensation if nessecary. You want the flash to light the ceilling as bright as poss to evenly light the scene.

Thanks John. I guess that's what I was looking for. Confirmation that I was in a tough situation and didn't pull a gomer mistake that would have fixed everything. I find exposure nuances the trickiest to spot while taking the shots because you really have to be looking for them. As you know, the human eye has incredible dynamic range so spotting differences in lighting across a scene is tough if you aren't really dialed into it. You get home and look at the shots and think, hmm, don't remember this guy standing in a shadow...