SHOOT A HDR LANDSCAPE

Mike Harris shows you how to capture a high-contrast scene by shooting a three-shot bracket and blending the exposures to create an HDR image

- Mike Harris

1 HOUR

One of the first things we’re taught as photographers is to expose for the highlights because it’s much easier to bring back details in the shadows when editing. However, sometimes the highlights are so bright that this method causes the shadows to clip – and when that happens it doesn’t matter how large your raw files are or how good your editing software is, that shadow detail is lost for good.

This situation is particularly common 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 the time to fiddle about with 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 and the brightness range of the scene. Here 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.