School project what am I doing wrong???

Hi guys, for a school project I was suppose to photo shoot nature, I chose Adrspach though its like 4 hours by train for my house, but figured it would be pretty cool as nobody would have it there. Came back with some decent photos when I got this while editing.

The first picture is after editing. I wanted the sky to come out a lot more, so I used the graduated filter and it seems like it pulls out more than the sky, if I try to pull out by using the brush it doesn't come out the way I want to because I though the top of the trees with the brush not to mention the tree on the left. Is there a way to pull out the sky with out pulling out anything else?

Lumonocity masking. There is a bit of a learning curve with them, but that is what you want to use to get the best blend.

http://goodlight.us …ks/luminosityma​sks-1.html

what fstop were you on?

I assume that you are shooting raw, since you are a photo student. There are controls in Bridge (and other raw processors) to help with the darkening of the blue in the sky. As Robert said, masks are the best way to control it, either in Photoshop or the Nik plugins.

Turn down the "Luminance" of blue in LR.

But next time, use a polarizer or don't shoot at the brightest time of day.

What El Duderino said... He beat me to it.

Lightroom has an automask feature in the brush which works well sometimes.
You also have glare on the rocks. The polarizer would eliminate that as well as sky glare.