I was out doing an assignment about symmetric and asymmetric pictures (rule of third, golden mean, golden ratio).

I could not figure out what is the best way to deal with the following setting:

• I am sitting in the shade, the sun is clear behind me.
• I used F2.8, 1/250s, WB 7500k (sun), 80mm focal length on MFT, 200 ISO
• I would have liked to have proper exposure in the foreground and the background as good as the human eye could see

I could not even come close :-(

Either the foreground was ok, and the background was overexposed (as in picture below). Or the background was ok, and the foreground was too dark so that you can only see the shape.

The most important to me would be to see at least a bit of the grey colors of the fountain and the pigeons in that case; you can ignore the asymmetric attempt (although if you can comment on that, I'd be happy to learn your ideas).