Problems with blue skies

[sparkiesworld]

I’m having some problems with white balance on my new camera, at least I think it is. The first photo below was taken on a sunny day with brilliant blue skies but the image has come out with totally burnt out sky. Is there something simple i can do to stop this happening again during the shooting? I don’t want to use a polarising filter.

The second image was also taken on a day with deep blue skies but I changed the white balance to 10,000 Kelvins which I read on an internet site would help the blue sky show up better. It has but there is a distinct pinky, orange hue covering the shot. Is there a better WB setting I should use?

 

[foodpoison]

1. ND grad filter
2. combine different exposures

 

[The Matt]

Pic number one, the problem is your exposure. The sky is brighter than your foreground, so to expose the foreground correctly, your sky is way overexposed. If your sky was spot on, your foreground would be way too dark. You could expose for a medium value and try to pull out as much detail as you could in processing. Or you could take two exposures, one for the ground and one for the sky, then merge them.

ND grad filters are used for this kind of thing too- they darken your sky. They wouldn't work here though as they would darken the tower too much as well.

 

[sparkiesworld]

Ok, thank you- i'll try those suggestions tomorrow blue sky providing- and maybe have a look at ND filters if I have no luck.