Hi Guys, sorry for not coming back before now.
I thankful for all the responses,awesome to share and learn. I have a long way to go, in terms of both shooting in the field and the post processing.
I'm going to look into lumosity masks. I never had much success with HDR, not sure I'm going to give that up entirely. It sucks spending hours on a image that turns out looking like crap.
I recently did a photo where I added a layer of a longer exposure on top of the normal one, then I used a brush with low opacity brushing on the black parts of the image. What I dislike the most are small black shadows that look like dots, big dark areas isn't necessarily a problem, and can look good. But those spots often look like crap.
I wasn't really happy with the result though.
Here's the image:
It's okay, but nothing special about it. You watch it for a few seconds then move on. But there are no completely black spots. The problem was mainly on the grass in front, especially on the right side.