Looking for critique on my PP

I thought about posting this in the critique section. But, that section appears more geared to the actual photography aspect of photography and not post processing. I'm still learning and working on the photography part. And, this is part of it.

I'm in the midst of learning exposure techniques combined with dealing with the aftermath of tough exposures. This is my first try:

First Try:

Well, I'd say there is a lot that you can do for this image, especially since you shot in Raw. What I'd encourage is for you to spend some time browsing our RAW Conversion Thread and see what can be done!

I can tell you what I would have done, which I'm not saying is better, just different.

I would have spot metered the sky, to the right, away from the sun and added 2.3 more exposure which would have given me around 1/250, f4.5 @ 100. this would give me a RAW in which the sky is very light, but still contains all the color data so it can be darkened easily. And the dark areas will have received the best exposure possible and will also have maximum data, although they will still be technically "underexposed". I would then make two conversions from the RAW, one darkening everything until the sky is a pleasing color and the second adjusting the shadow areas to taste (including increasing contrast in order to get some life into those trees) and I would then blend the two versions in PSCS.

Also; looks like there's a filter on the lens? There's quite a bit of flare (haze).

Thanks for the suggestions. There was no filter on the lens.

Might be in the atmosphere. A bit of Clarity (ACR) might help reduce it. Otherwise, use USM with a high radius / low amount in PS.

René Damkot wrote in post #12729377
Might be in the atmosphere. A bit of Clarity (ACR) might help reduce it. Otherwise, use USM with a high radius / low amount in PS.

Yeah it was pretty muggy here, yesterday. Is ACR the adobe RAW utility?

Str0ntium wrote in post #12729510
Yeah it was pretty muggy here, yesterday. Is ACR the adobe RAW utility?

Yes, ACR = Adobe Camera Raw.

tzalman wrote in post #12728882
I can tell you what I would have done, which I'm not saying is better, just different.

I would have spot metered the sky, to the right, away from the sun and added 2.3 more exposure which would have given me around 1/250, f4.5 @ 100. this would give me a RAW in which the sky is very light, but still contains all the color data so it can be darkened easily. And the dark areas will have received the best exposure possible and will also have maximum data, although they will still be technically "underexposed". I would then make two conversions from the RAW, one darkening everything until the sky is a pleasing color and the second adjusting the shadow areas to taste (including increasing contrast in order to get some life into those trees) and I would then blend the two versions in PSCS.

Sorry I didn't reply to your suggestion, until now. I wanted to try this out, first. I spent all day shooting in mid-day sunlight as I'm practicing my exposure techniques. Got a lot of very decent shots.

I waited until exactly the same time (7:38pm) to redo this shot exposing to the sky to the right. The results were less than stellar. Recovering the sky was spotty, at best. Recovering the shadows was about the same. After blending the two, the shot didn't look much better than my original posting above (save for the sky being a blue).

In my opinion, I was asking too much of a camera. This appears to be an AE bracketing situation.

Thanks for your ideas.

Sorry for the slow reply.
Getting two conversions, one for highlights and one for shadows, does take a bit of practice, and the blending can be tricky if done manually. But there are plenty of "HDR" applications available that take the pain out of the blending operation. In the example below the first is the original RAW at LR defaults and the second is the result of two tifs blended in Dynamic HDR. I realize you may not want to open the shadows this much, preferring the silhouette effect, but I thought an example of what can be done might be useful.

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very nice example, TZ! Thanks!