First Attempt At Layering

In photography, many times photographers are faced with a choice: either they can choose their settings to focus on the foreground or on the background. The problem is that the choice will leave either some part of the picture washed out or silhouetted. With layering, a photographer can get the best of both worlds. Using the instructions from Digital Photography School and How To: HDR Photography, I tried my hand at layering 2 photos I took the other night.


I would like to say up front that its not the best example of layering, but it is my first attempt. I also was taking the pictures from my car, so I did not have a tripod to stabilize my camera. So please forgive any mistakes you find in the finished photograph.



The first picture I took was an attempt to capture clearly the foreground and the abandoned gas station. This led to the sky being washed out. The unedited photo is below.

Now, this was perfectly fine, because the second photograph was going to capture the sky in all its glory. This led to the gas station being silhouetted. The unedited photo is below.

I opened both photos in Photoshop CS5, layering the photo with the over-exposed sky on top of the properly exposed sky photo. Using the instructions from DPS, I edited out the overexposed sky, leaving a photograph which was completely properly exposed. I then opened it up in Lightroom and edited the photo. The result is below.

It won't take anyone long to see where the mistakes are in the photograph. However, I spent a total of 3 minutes on the finished product, from beginning to end and am quite pleased with the result.


Now, some will call this an HDR photograph, because it uses multiple exposures in an attempt to capture what the eye sees. I wouldn't completely agree with that, mainly because there is controversy about the definition of HDR photography. I'm just going to stick to calling this type of editing a layered photograph.


JFM