Exposure Blending

If You Need to Expand Your Camera’s Dynamic Range but Want to Avoid Extreme Hdr Effects, jordan Butters Demonstrate Show Manual Bracketing and Exposure Blending Ensures Controlled Results

- Jordan Butters

WHAT COMES TO mind when you think of HDR photography? Ultra-detailed cityscapes? Perfectly-exposed coastal views? Or the retina-melting initial efforts that your hard drive would rather forget? For me, it’s definitely the latter! HDR photography gets a bit of a bad rap from some photographers and, to be honest, it’s easy to see why – it’s an effect that’s often overused by beginners who get carried away with automated HDR software and turn every dial right up to 11! Even with more restrained use, such software often doesn’t do a great job of creating pleasing results simply because it mashes together shadows and highlights across the entire image, without knowing whether the sky should be light, and the shadows need to be at least a little bit dark.