gdanmitchell
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This scene poses quite a few challenges!
If it were mine and I was on the scene making the exposure I would consider some of the following:
1. I would carefully consider whether the sun itself must be in the frame. If I could contrive to come up with a composition that held the sun outside of the frame I would do that, since you have a choice (if you work from a single exposure) of either blowing out a chunk of sky around the sun or turning the foreground almost black.
2. If I felt that really need the sun in the frame, I might wait to make the exposure until a thicker part of the clouds moved in front of it - the effect would be similar but the sun a bit less bright, or...
3. I would "exposure bracket," with one exposure much shorter to get a less blown out version of the sun and the second longer to get a good exposure of the foreground, but in any case...
4. I would take steps to deal with the lens flare (which is a different thing than the light beams). With the sun in the frame, I might make two exposures. One would be more or less what you did while in the second I would hold my hand or hat or something similar in front of the camera to block the sun. Then I would combine the lower section of the hand-in-the-shot frame and the upper section of the shot where the sun is visible.
In post, with the image you have...
1. I might try a crop that eliminated just a bit of the upper edge of the frame and the bit of partial tree on the left edge.
2. In Lightroom or Photoshop I might try to bring up the near black tones a bit and then increase contrast (by using a steeper curve) in this lower area of the frame.
3. Since you don't have a lot to work with here in regards to color, I'd try a black and white version, perhaps with a software red or yellow filter.
4. I would likely use a curve layer to adjust the sky a bit.
Let me be a bit direct about this photograph. I like the concept of showing the sun rays (or God rays or God beams, as they are sometimes known), but I think we all occasionally run into a photograph where we are wedded to some small aspect of the image that we find hard to give up. In this case, I suspect that your pleasure in recalling those light beams may not translate as well to others who view this photograph, no matter how badly you want them to look at it this way.
Such photographs - backlit, sun in the frame, subtle variations in light, a rather flat foreground - are among the most difficult to make into effective images.
Good luck,
Dan
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