Background and Appriture difficulties

OH man... the problems of changing appriture to get different effects and still end up with a decent picture. The time of day plays a huge problem in getting a picture to turn out. Near the end of photos my friends father was nice enough to stay seated so in seeing the variations in appriture. All the people here are family members of a good friend. He was unable to attend their yearly apple picking and I have never picked apples before so they invited me to this. But I can honestly say I have been spoiled by automatic appriture settings. With more work on larger scale backgrounds I will be better able to see the effects. But one of my largest problems was just being able to look at the camera in the bright light that morning to tell How the settings need to be shifted in order to get the better picture.