Hi slqc,
This is a nice informal family shot, and everyone looks like they are truly happy and enjoying the scene. The small image that you posted appears, as a JPEG, to be overexposed, especially in the facial skin tones and the light clothing of the infant. While open shade gives a diffuse light, there is a price to pay - namely that there is very little modeling of form in the way of contrast across the faces, etc. built by light and shadow. Open shade also produces a blue cast, as the color temperature of the shade is very high, due essentially to the fill light coming from the open blue sky.
So, you are fighting against loss of modeling of form, overexposure and high color temperature without white balance control. So, the people look flat and blue. What to do?
You need to have a white balance reference under these conditions, in my opinion. This way there is no guessing at how the skin tones should look, and in this shot, you have a beautiful range of skin tones. Second, you need to get your exposure correct, even if shooting RAW, but ESPECIALLY is you are shooting JPEG. You may want to consider shooting a bracketed series of shots - for a couple of reasons:
1) you have a greater chance of "getting it right" if you are still mastering exposure (and who isn't, frankly)
2) you will capture a wider dynamic range that will afford you the opportunity to replace the blown out background of the properly exposed subjects with the background from the underexposed subjects.
Shoot with a tripod in burst mode and have at it, maybe +/- 1 stop - experiment. In RAW you may be able to recover a significant amount of highlight detail from the shot you posted - It would be helpful to see the RAW file.
As far as post on the JPEG of this shot, you would need to white balance and get the exposure under control (straightforward in RAW development) - then bring out the form of the subjects with some local contrast moves, or some dodging and burning.
I tried a couple of different things on the small JPEG, maybe a little over the top to see how far I could push it - for example, the left side of the darker skin toned faces are way too saturated and out of control. I also added a little simulated DOF bokeh to pop the subjects off of the background (again, maybe a little too much). You managed to get some good rim lighting on some of the subjects, but it is sort of haphazard, so it may not have been as effective as it could.
Another thing to consider is some directional light from an off camera flash or two, or maybe a big reflector just out of camera view that can access a patch of bright sunlight, to create some more shadow modeling across the subjects - this may get tricky with a larger group, but experiment and see if you can manage to pull it off.
Good luck - have fun!
Kirk
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