Balancing act

Mike Harris balances a high-contrast scene by building a three-shot bracket and merging an HDR image

- Mike Harris

The Mission

– Shoot an HDR by bracketing a sequence and merging it in post

Time

– One hour

Skill level

– Intermediate

Kit needed

– Tripod

– Adobe CC

One of the first things we’re taught is to expose for the highlights, because it’s much easier to bring back details in the shadows when editing. But sometimes the highlights are so bright, this method causes the shadows to clip. When that happens, it doesn’t matter how large your Raw files are or how good your editing software is, that data is lost forever.

This situation is particularly prevalent when shooting a landscape towards the sun. One way to balance exposures is to use a graduated neutral density filter, but if you don’t own an ND grad or simply don’t have enough time to faff around attaching filters, auto-exposure bracketing might be the answer.

This function tells your camera to take a sequence of images, each with varying exposures. How many images you capture and the exposure value between each shot will depend on your camera’s ability and personal preference. We captured a three-shot bracket in one-stop increments: one image was underexposed by one-stop, one image was neutral and one image was overexposed by one stop.