As photographers we frequently struggle to overcome the limitations of our equipment in order to create the photographs we envision. One of the biggest limitations of traditional photography is the narrow dynamic range of light that can be contained in an image compared to what we see.
Techniques for blending exposures vary from simple to highly complex. They can be accomplished using skilled layer masking techniques in Photoshop. We also have the option to use one of a rapidly growing list of exposure blending programs commonly referred to as High Dynamic Range (HDR) software.
One of the most common questions I’m asked in classes and workshops on the topic of bracketing exposures for exposure blending and HDR imaging is, “how do you know how many exposures you need to bracket?”
The goal is to capture all the dynamic range tonal information in a scene in a series of exposures. The sequence of images below shows four exposures I took of a high dynamic range scene on the Columbia River. Having all the shadow and highlight information recorded in the various exposures allowed me to blend them using layer masks to create the final image. I could have also used one of many HDR applications to blend the exposure values.
To read the full article I wrote on the Photo Cascadia Blog go HERE.
You can read the complete article on the PhotoCascadia.com blog.
Please leave a comment or question below.