
Landscape Photograph by Melissa Fague
Exposure Bracketing
Today, most cameras come equipped EV or Exposure Compensation feature built in. This allows photographers to take multiple photographs of the scene each at a different exposure. A good practice for any photographer is to take three photographs of the scene. One of the shots is your starting point, were you feel the correct exposure of the scene is. The second shot is 1 stop above (+1) and the third shot is 1 stop below (-1) the normal exposure (0). As a beginner photographer think of it as insurance for your landscape photograph but as you grow as a photographer you can use those images to create HDR photos. HDR is when you blend the photographs together to create a image that showcase a High Dynamic Rate (HDR) of light (more on this later). The process of bracketing gives you a better shot of getting a correctly exposed of the photograph and details to work with in the shadow. If you don’t want to save the extra photos for later use or practice then you can simply delete them.