A really tough technical shot, so don't feel bad that it didn't come off.
You mention trying to keep the sky from blowing, but unfortunately you didn't succeed. At least on my monitor there is no detail. A graduated ND filter would have helped, but you have the issue of the tombstone sticking right up into the middle of the sky, so I don't know how it would have ultimately come out. And while Oregon rocks for its beaches, I have a really, really hard time making fir trees look good on a picture. Here they sorta look like a blurry blob. Blech.
The fill flash was a good idea, but I wonder if it wasn't too strong. Personally if I can, I use flash as little as possible. I often try to light with natural sources like candles or such. The color hue is so much prettier. Speaking of color, since there is so little, I would have gone with B&W here. Or even sepia to try to give that old look. I pulled your pic into PS and it looked like the blue channel made the tombstone more contrasty than it is in color.
Keep trying. If I come up with an answer for those fir trees, I'll let you know. The best I can do so far is sharp sillouette. You could have tried that here by upping the aperture to f/16 or f/22 or something. (you would have needed a tripod then. |
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