Exposure Bracketing & Blending

In landscape photography, there are certain nature scenes where the camera cannot contain the magic.  The highlights are blown out.  There are no shadows in the details.  This image falls flat.  The camera alone cannot contain that moment of epic and intense light shining down on the land.  This is where exposure bracketing and blending of images can help your landscape photography accurately reflect that powerful moment.

The dynamic range is the ratio between the maximum and minimum measurable light intensities. There is a high dynamic range when there are extreme lights and darks within a scene. Often, this is a situation which is difficult to photograph. However, there’s no reason to despair. You can gain control of your highlights and shadows with landscape photography articles and tutorials about exposure bracketing, high dynamic range (HDR) photography, and manual blending.

To start, the first step to bracketing and blending is to gain an understanding of the camera’s histogram.  That is to say, the photographer can read the histogram and know if one frame can capture the entire dynamic range. If the dynamic range is too great, then the next course of action to capture the image is to use bracketing and/or blending. One option to tame intense light is to use a graduated neutral density filter.  This is where the densest filter area is over the brightest area of the image. If this in-camera blending technique isn’t enough, then bracketing your shots is another option.

Our photographers will guide you on the best situations and step-by-step directions with exposure bracketing and blending. Moreover, they will explain the advantages and challenges with each as well as the best ways to combine your HDR images in post-processing. Many software suites, such and Lightroom and Photoshop, can perform HRD processing.