How To BRACKET For PERFECTLY EXPOSED Landscape Photos

☝️Subscribe For FREE Photography Tips & Tutorials & Get My Top 4 Compositional Tips

In this week’s episode, we discuss how to bracket for perfectly exposed landscape photos. Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of landscape photography is determining how to properly expose your photos when lighting conditions are less than ideal. These difficult lighting conditions are rather common when it comes to landscape and outdoor photography with the most frequent occurrence being a bright sky with a dark foreground. The dynamic range in today's cameras has never been better, but even the best cameras out there still struggle with properly exposing areas of extreme light and extreme dark within a single image, and this is where exposure bracketing helps.

In this video I review what exposure bracketing is, how to use it, why you should use it, and when you should apply this in camera technique to your landscape photos. The process may seem a bit intimidating at first, but once you try it on your own you'll quickly realize just how easy it really is. You're basically just taking a series of photos with different exposure settings applied to each. I usually take three photos when I exposure bracket, one that's underexposed, one that's "properly exposed" and one that's overexposed. Once you have your photo bracket series complete, you blend the images together and watch the magic unfold!

There's multiple different ways to blend the images and in this video I use Lightroom to merge my three bracketed photos together to create one perfectly exposed landscape photo.

If you enjoyed this video, please consider giving it a thumbs up and let me know what you think in the comments below - I guarantee I'll get back to ya.

Thanks for watching everyone!

-Mark D.

**FREE TRIAL: Music & Sound Effects I Use**

**Below are the items in my Camera Bag for 2019**

**Photo & Video Gear I Use**

I earn a small commission on the Amazon links if you decide to purchase the item. This tiny commission adds up and greatly helps me to continue creating content for this channel. I very much appreciate your support!

#landscapephotography #exposurebracketing

FOLLOW ME HERE:

[JohnDrummondPhoto]

Addendums needed for WHY to bracket with shutter speed instead of aperture or ISO:
- Changing F/stop will vary the depth of field for each image, so you'll have variations between images of areas in or out of focus.
- Changing ISO can change the color balance.

P.S. - set the camera's white balance to a manual function (e.g. daylight, shade, etc.) rather than AWB so the color values remain constant. Varying exposure lengths can also affect the color balance, so the images may not visually match when you blend later.

[mikemitchell]

I have no doubt your explanations of technique are helping many budding shooters!

[davidadams]

Quick tip if you do a lot bracketing, use the Auto-Stack by Capture Time feature ( _select all your bracketed shots >> Photo >> Stacking >> Auto-Stack by Capture Time_ ). Then you can simply select the stack and CTRL+H to HDR it. Great video!

[kennypringle]

I have never attempted hdr bracketing of multiple images. After watching your video I’m no longer afraid and intimidated by the process.

[ralphbaez]

The best explanation of bracketing I've seen yet. You actually go through all the steps in camera as well as in post instead of rushing through like most guys do. Thanks!

[jamesgerboc]

I like how your camera exposure, exposure compensation and histogram are reflected in Live View. Your expansion of how to tell when to use bracketing is much harder when Live View doesnt change and the effects are only in Playback.

[VSims]

Three years later and this video will help me on my first HDR RE project.. thank you!

[Powerstroke]

Well, I see I'm back, after 3 years, checking out your video again Mark, as I haven't used bracketing for a while, and figure it's time to get back into adding some HDR into my images. Appreciate your help, as I see many of your videos, and find them all so very helpful...thanks again.

[sshultz]

I really appreciate that your video runs through the entire process from taking the shot through post processing. Well done!

[antonydavid]

When using Lightroom HDR, I always check the ‘stack images’ box to clean up my library.

[stevegrooms]

The general advice you give early in the video is fine. It's the kind of tip YouTube videos usually offer. But when you compared the HDR image with an edited version of the image, you did something remarkable. That step elevated the video from "pretty good" to "great!"

[davidaldridge]

I had never heard of the "one stop rule" before. It certainly makes a lot of sense. Thanks Mark for that very useful tip.

[Nicola_Kluge]

Thank you so much for comparing the single shot to the bracketed shot version! That was extremely helpful! Great tutorial, really appreciate you!

[justond]

Mark thank you so much, first of all, for speaking as a human and not as a used car salesman like too many videos I found on YouTube. Your information is practical easy to understand and easy to put to use, common sense and with visible results, thank you and I'll be watching a lot of Mark Denny videos this weekend ... Juston

[wahabdilawar]

This is most definitely the BEST video on the topic of HDR, which I have seen so far. The explanation in the end regarding the difference in detail was eye-opening. Brilliant.
Thank you very much for your time and effort.

[benjaminstrobel]

Mark! Thank you for taking the time to break down exposure bracketing. Super helpful!

[richard]

Mark you hit a home run with video. Thanks !

[mauistevebear]

Great video! I'm a big fan of stacked images, both exposure, and focus. What I learned from you today was your 3 image, 2 stop setting. I've been using 5-7 with 1 stop, and YES, they were coming HDRie. Gonna start using just 3/2 stop. Thanks, Mark! you are a great instructor!

[grantw]

I wish I had watched this BEFORE I went to the Grand Canyon and Egypt. Merging is much faster in getting closer to a great image than just relying on LR alone.

[ianclark]

Hi Mark Another really useful video, something else for me to think about, many thanks Ian