I enjoy taking photographs of interiors. One of the challenges with many interiors is the large dynamic range of light that's present in the frame. Many times, bright sunlight is shining through the windows while other areas of the scene are dark.

In situations like this, my first approach is to create a high dynamic range (HDR) photograph by blending a number of bracketed exposures. When the range of light varies more, I bracket more exposures. Sometimes I end up with as many as 9 exposures bracketed one stop apart when producing a HDR photograph.

Yesterday, I photographed the interior of the historic St. Patrick Church in Lemont, Illinois. The range of light in the frame was significant. The following image is the best single exposure that I could achieve. It's not terrible, but note how the highlights in the chandeliers and windows are partially blown out:

Next, I bracketed 7 exposures and then blended the exposures together to create a high dynamic range (HDR) photograph. The result is better, but I was hoping to retain more color and detail in the stained glass windows:

St. Patrick ChurchSt. Patrick Catholic Church at 200 E Illinois Street in Lemont, Illinois on July 7, 2014. This image consists of five exposures blended together to create a high dynamic range (HDR) image.

Finally, I tried a new approach that I recently learned by viewing Jimmy McIntyre's tutorial on blending exposures with luminosity masks in Photoshop. Click here to view that tutorial.

As the tutorial instructed, I made an additional exposure of the scene that was significantly underexposed. Yet, this highly underexposed frame represents a reasonable exposure for the very bright highlights:

St. Patrick ChurchSt. Patrick Catholic Church at 200 E Illinois Street in Lemont, Illinois on July 7, 2014. This image consists of five exposures blended together to create a high dynamic range (HDR) image. From there, I placed the underexposed frame on a separate layer on top of the HDR frame in Photoshop. I used Jimmy McIntyre's luminosity masks to enable the darker windows and chandeliers to replace the blown out ones in the HDR photograph. The result is that the chandeliers and stained glass windows now retain far greater details and color than in the original image:

St. Patrick ChurchInterior of the St. Patrick Catholic Church from the balcony at 200 E Illinois Street in Lemont, Illinois on July 7, 2014. This image consists of seven exposures blended together to create a high dynamic range (HDR) image. Of course, this is a matter of taste. I prefer the final image over the others. Yet, some people may say that the last image looks unnatural. Over time and with enough practice, my blending skills within Photoshop should continue to improve.