Lovely, lovely park..... :~) You have really given yourself a challenge! The circumstances in which you are shooting these is difficult for even very experienced photographers. The exposure is way off in this unfortunately. The foreground is overexposed and the background has lost it's details in shadow due to underexposure. I would usually not photograph in this type of light but sometimes it is the only opportunity to do so. Possibly a neutral density filter....although it seems, just be looking that there is a big diffence in stops needed between foreground and background to get proper exposure. It would seem that advice given previously, expose for foreground/ expose for background and put together in PS would be called for here.

yep.. that I was almost sure you would have said.. indeed,I decided to take anyway the pic with this peculiar light in contrast to use it (VERY eventually.. I have no much time lately for it) for a 2d work (kinda of faery dance thing) and I couldn't solve the trouble of lightening. I am gonna be in that park in two weeks and I will try the collage-thing just to see how it can be.. and if it goes well, I will post in the Forum to see what you think :) ah, and definitely that park would deserve a visit.The countryside I posted previously was all around it :) The two married had wonderful locations to have their pics taken in :) eheh :) Ty again...If I would be less lazy, I would try to shoot pics at convenient light times (early morning and near to sunset they say? sort of.. ;))

In a situation like this where you have high-contrast and a big difference in exposure between light and dark tones, you'll NEVER get a good balance. My advice would be to expose for the highlights - the lightest part of the scene, and not worry about the shadows at all. The shadows under the trees are going to be black anyway - unless you open up 5 stops or something. So the best thing is to get the light/medium tones right. If you had underexposed this by about 1 1/2 - 2 stops, it would be fine - and the shadows would be the same. You can't get any blacker than black. But really, the best thing would be to wait until late afternoon. In italy, 4- 6 o'clock is the best light you'll get. Any later and it starts to get too red. mac PS Lavoravo a Forte Dei Marmi, quindi conosco quella zona.

Here U could crop the shot cutting out the lower overexposed part.. maybe U can leave a little overexposed band.. I really love how U catched the color and the light on the top-left tree leaves.. And the black part in the center-left brings mistery to the image. Beautiful work. :)

thank you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Forte dei marmi.. wow :) I love to get there.. my former pic in my artist page was taken exactly there :)Thank you SO much for the inputs :) (sorry for the late reply.. you know I was away in rome ;))