Photos from the cemetery. C&C would be great! Thanks!

[cutsman]

My friend and I went to take some photos today at this beautiful cemetery not too far from here. Below are some of my shots (more can be found at my new zenfolio site, link in my sig).

Today was also the first time I've experienced lens flare...as in pic #3. Is this a big problem or is lens flare in shots with strong backlight sometimes deemed to be acceptable? How do I go about avoiding it or if I already have it in a photo, removing it in PS?

Anyways, hope you guys enjoy them. And as always, I need all the help and tips I can get! So please let me know what you don't like and what I can do to improve. Thanks all!

 

[Zman5225]

I don't know much about photos, but I really like that last photo of the angel. Nice pics from a cemetery though!

Z

 

[synth3tik]

I like the last one with the angel and also the flowers. The chain is my fav. Shooting in a cemetery can be hard, it's hard to get away from that bored goth kid feel from the photos. I think the color photos help eliminate this, pictures of crosses, fences, and statues has grown old, but you have some good ideas about how to move away from that. I would keep the color and find more things that get less attention for the goth kids. Then you will have some really nice shots.

 

[cutsman]

Thanks for the positive feedback.

As a follow up to my lens flare issue (to which i received zero replies )...
I eventually decided it was a little distracting, so I tried to remove it in PS. The problem was I couldn't clone out the flare in the sky, especially where it overlaps the tree branches at the top of the photo.

Anyways, I decided to play around with different channels, saturation, etc. and below is what I came up with to reduce the flare.

If anybody has any advice on how to do this better, it'd be much appreciated!! Thanks!