Photography May Look Easy, But It Isn't Unless You Know a Few Tricks like...
MARCH 22, 2024
I really appreciate and enjoy viewing a beautiful image and chances are if you are reading this newsletter you also enjoy doing so. But before I dive into the topic at hand, I will give you some context about this particular image.
I am fortunate enough to live in Valencia, España so many of my images are captured in this beautiful country. One of the advantages of living in Valencia is that is situated on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. About 70 minutes down the coast is a small town called El Poble Nou de Benitatxell and it's here that we find a cove - or "Cala" in Valenciano - called the Cala de Moraig. Adjacent to this cala lies La Cueva de los Arcos, and one morning I hiked down and ventured inside for a look.
Now to briefly explain the technique called Bracketing. Why is an image like this challenging to create? The short answer is bright light and deep shadows in the same composition. If you are shooting with a camera and not a phone, chances are the default metering setting is on a matrix setting which means that it takes into account the shadows and bright light and computes an average exposure for the image like the one in the middle above. That middle image looks ok but that's it. Only your significant other and Mom will tell you it's amazing. But it's not. Sure you can import it into Lightroom and spend a bunch of time repairing and adjusting but that's usually not going to result in a quality image. I know, because I have wasted a lot of time trying to do so.
Truth be told, this was my very first attempt at bracketing so it can't be that difficult because it worked pretty well for me. To begin, here's the plan: Using a tripod, sort out your composition carefully making sure the image is level and in focus. Before you get to your photo location it's best to figure this part out - locate the auto bracketing settings on your camera and set it for two or three stops and for it to capture three, four or five images. If it's your first try, you can try and combination of two stops and three stops and three, four and five images and see which result you prefer because after all you are the artist. In this particular image, I took three images in "Manual" mode with my Nikon Z8 - the first three stops underexposed, the second at my estimation of the correct exposure and last at three stops overexposed. Later, when you get home, import your images into Lightroom, highlight the three images, select "Merge into HDR" and then click "Create". Lightroom then stacks the photos on top of each other and digitally combines all of them to create a final HDR image. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and without getting super technical it simply means that it creates the most vibrant image possible and evens out the exposure. Full disclosure: I did adjust some of the colors and made some other minor tweaks in Lightroom to make the final HDR image look exactly the way I wanted.
And, as you can see from the first image in this post, the end result is pretty amazing. It's that simple. If you want a complete tutorial it's best to google Bracketing for (your camera here) that and watch a video.
Remember - progress and improvement don't come from being afraid to try new things. Read your camera manual and get out of your comfort zone. That's what I did and look what happened :)
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