I presume though on that last picture it was very dark when you first saw it out of camera and you have whacked up the settings in PP to get 'a result'?

I know you are keen to learn so first learning point is you can often rescue shadow detail in an image. The dark areas and blacks often have more detail in them that can be found in post processing. The second point is to control the highlights. With the sun in frame it has completely burnt out to a white blob. Actually on this image it works well but you may notice in PP you can do nothing with truly burnt out white highlights, you can't get the detail at all. Therefore generally sun in frame goes beyond what the camera can cope with but it can be made to work on occasion.

Plenty of luck and not much judgement at the moment!
I take loads of photos then hope that one or two of them are clear or in focus!


Here are a couple of the originals as they came out of the camera:




I actually wanted the sun in this shot as I wanted to get a real sunny feel.

oops here is the other one

I really like the originals in both cases!

xx