Century Manor - An Abandoned Asylum

[deanmccoy]

This is an abandoned Insane Asylum built in the 1800's. I am trying HDR using lightroom and because I have a d3000 I can not use bracketing. Please help with what techniques I can use to make this better. Please remember I don't have bracketing. All comments are welcome and thank you...

[EMansfield]

Colors look rich here but it is too saturated for my taste. I think you overworked the post-processing. I like your perspective and composition for the first photo.

Cheers!

Eric Mansfield

[Swisstony10]

You do have bracketing - every camera with manual controls has bracketing. I was taught to bracket shots over 20 years ago on a Praktica MTL5B - everything on that camera was manual, including the film winder.

Here's what you do:

Go to manual mode - this won't work properly if you're using Auto, Tv or Av mode, you need to be able to have a fixed aperture setting and still control the shutter speed. Set up your shot, focus, meter, and set your shutter and aperture based on the light and conditions etc, and take the shot (as you would normally anyway). Then increase your shutter speed and take another shot, then increase it again, and take another one. Then go back to your original settings, decrease the shutter speed, take another shot, decrease it again, and take another one. That's five bracketed shots right there.

Auto-bracketing, available on many DSLRs is just an automated version of doing that, but in most cases it still only gives you three images - the "correct" exposure, an over-exposure, and an underexposure, which is why after a brief dalliance with the convenience of auto-bracketing, I've just gone back to doing it manually.

That said, to do it the manual way like that, it's best to use a tripod, so the camera doesn't shift around between shots - if I don't have one with me and have to shoot hand-held, I'll go with the auto-bracketing with the drive set to high-speed continuous.

It's all part of the learning curve of photography - not just knowing what functions your camera has (or in this case doesn't have), but knowing what they're actually doing, and making sure you know how to do it yourself.

Oh, and I really like the composition in the first one, although unlike the above poster, I also like the heavy saturation. I'm less keen on the composition of the second one - I think it could do with having more height to it..

Russ.