[PhotoNewt]

Much better photograph John. Still a little dark for my taste but could be my monitor - I am on my office computer now and the monitor is not too good.

I have always favored taking a well exposed photo on camera to keep post-processing work (manual or digital) to a minimum. I have a 1-stop, 2-stop and 3-stop GND filters on my photo bag - you can combine them to get the sky exposure as close to the ground as possible.

On manual mode I use the spot meter (you can use the partial meter in your camera for this) to take a reading from a neutral area of the ground - in your photo I would chose the wooden deck. Take a note of the shutter speed and then take a reading of the sky (usually a blue area far from the sun) and leaving the aperture constant use the shutter speed to adjust for a normal exposure. Then I count how many stops difference between that reading and the ground to get the EV difference and use this information to select the filters(s) I need to use to even the exposure.

Then I mount the filter(s), set the meter back to evaluative mode, frame the scene, set the exposure and shoot (with mirror lock enabled and using the 10-second self-timer function). Most times I bracket my shot 1-stop above and below to assure the best possible exposure is captured. I always shoot these in RAW so I have even more control to fine tune the exposure afterwards if needed.