Thanks for the comments Jake. As I am relatively new to photography can you give me any tips as to where I went wrong with the first and last photos or guidance as to how I can improve them in Photoshop Elements please? I have taken on board your comments as to the second photo and removed my partners head and the green doors to the right!
Hi Reg,
It is very hard to take this sort of photo in the height of the day, as the sun makes for very unflattering light. This over exposure happens when the cameras metering system can't cope with the extreme differences between the bright sky and the dark foreground and only meters for one of them, in this case it has metered for the foreground so that becomes correctly exposed but the sky then blows.
The best way to stop this is with a ND grad filter, which is dark one one side and transparent on the other. This then darkens the sky, so when you meter for the foreground the sky doesnt overexpose as its already darkened. A Cokin (beginner) set can be bought for around £50 on amazon, then you need an adaptor which is around £10.
Do you shoot in RAW format? If you do, you can expose for the sky pushed to the limit without clipping highlights (the flashing on your LCD) and recover this using Adobe Camera Raw on photoshop.
I don't use elements, but it can't be much different from the full version (you can get a trial of this from Adobe) so if you create a layer mask, and then you can work on only reducing the exposure on the sky, but sadly, as it is blown, even in RAW you can't recover it as all the details of the sky and clouds has been lost.
Sorry for the essay, I hope it helps in some way. If you're still unclear or need further help/explanation please let me know and I'd be more than happy to help you
Jake
P.S. I bought a magbook from Tesco like this one
here for a fiver which helped me no end! I'm going later, and I'll get the exact name for you if they still have it.
