It’s often impossible to capture every detail we see with our eyes in one exposure in the camera. Lightroom’s “photo merge” and compositing is a game changer when you want that accurate exposure value representation.

We have all been there before: you find yourself in front of a beautiful blazing sunrise with a cool complimenting cloud cover. The middle and foreground swoop towards you in an underexposed but soft gradation of tones. You snap an exposure but you can’t get all the components of the picture in one exposure. You either blow out the highlights, or underexpose the shadows! What do you do?

Back in the old days of film you had to bring with you a few extra bags and hip pouches of polarizers, neutral density filters, graduated filters and more just to get the most out of a difficult landscape exposure. Have no fear, we now have Lightroom! 

Take a few minutes and watch me combine these two images shot at Crescent Park in New Orleans on my recent “Sunrise: Sunset Photography Workshop”