exposing the foreground

[Kwyjibo3]

I am having trouble when I take sky pictures at sunset+ of exposing the foreground..I shoot in my driveway and like to get my neighbors tree in the shots for some contrast to the sky..but they always come out totally black..I feel that I can't raise the exposure as that blows out the sky..and the sky is what I am taking a picture of..but it just seems funny that the sky looks perfect and I get no foreground.

here is an example I shot a few days ago.

 

[tirediron]

A circular polarizer is only going to do so much for foreground over-exposure, and to get the most out of graduated neutral density filters, you need a relatively straight horizon. I think the best way to deal with the image in the example would have been to shoot multiple images at 1 1/2 - 2 stop intervals and combine them as an HDR merge.

 

[Stan]

Try HDR with three exposure brackets. It should help.

Here's something for starters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

 

[prodigy2k7]

That picture looks underexposed as a whole. Try exposing it a bit more and metering off the foreground a little more...

 

[Resin42]

I was having some real problems with this at the weekend. I'm wondering if location might have been my main issue, all my best sunset and sunrise shots have something to catch the light in the foreground, perhaps a grassy field wasn't the best location. Any time I exposed to pick up the foreground the sun flared really badly making it kind of eliptical. When this didn't happen the foreground was made too noisy by fill light.

Oh well...