Sean Bagshaw's Video Tutorials

I'm probably the last photographer on this great planet who hasn't mastered exposure blending. Over the last few days I made a concerted effort to learn how to do it properly using a number of different techniques. I watched Sean Bagshaw's entire video tutorial, "Developing for Extended Dynamic Range" and took notes along the way. Finally, the whole process has been demystified. Sean presents several different methods for blending exposures that range from very basic to fairly advanced. His thorough explanations and demonstrations of each are easy to follow and then apply on your own images. Well worth $45, IMHO. Thanks, Sean!

"I'm probably the last photographer on this great planet who hasn't mastered exposure blending."

No, you're not, Bret. Include me in that list. In fact, I'll bet your high end body and favorite lens you're still better at it than me.

Bret,

I received his tutorials when I bought the Kuyper mask set and have nothing but good things to say about his approach and teaching style.
If you don't use the TK mask set I would recommend it to anyone if they have the technical aptitude.

Chers,
Robert

I have reviewed and used all 3 of the Sean Bagshaw tutorials on Photoshop and they are all great and quite informative. I would recommend them highly, from beginner to experienced Photoshop users there is something for everyone.

Mastering hand blending will change your entire workflow out in the field and obviously at home, let alone your photography career. I said "master". It takes time to be good at it. Do not give up if you want to compete. I Highly recommend sending your blend work to the landscape gallery here at NPN and disclose your newness to hand blending and get the critique you need to improve. The more you do this the faster you will get better. Beg for serious critique and you will get serious critique that will ensure you are on the right path to get better.

A bad blend is obvious to most. An average blend is obvious to those that do it. A good blend will still have opportunity to get better. A great blend will end the critique. Hand blending allows you to see a scene, remember it, and convey it as you saw it without limitations of the best cameras in the world.

I discovered it on my own and it's taken me a few years to feel like I can compete with the big blenders. I'm finally confident.

When I discovered it was all about hand blending, I completely left blending software like photomatix, and concentrated on doing it on my own. With many scenes photomatix can handle, but with dramatic high dynamic/dramatic scenes it won't even be in the same ball park as a good hand blend. Brett, you know people love a dramatic scene.

Lastly, be prepared to defend hand blending, in most cases, cameras can't transmit what our eye sees. Here's a good example. Shot in mid afternoon light, our eye sees the shadows, but I had to hand blend exposure into the shadows to render an image that was TRUE to the scene. A hand blend allowed this cool scene to shine, otherwise the scene would never be shared.

http://www.kaephotography.com/photo/a-colorado-scene/

Good luck on your new adventure.

I'm working my way through these tutorials as well and I agree they're super helpful. So much to learn!

Thanks for sharing this Bret!

I just got two more of Sean's tutorials and will be getting through them over the next couple of weeks. I'm pretty competent with post-production but I also know there's always plenty to learn.

If one liked Sean's videos, you may want to consider Chip Phillips videos as well. Yes, there is overlap, but it is useful to have another instructor cover techniques is a slghtly different approach. The repetitiion also helps one understand relatively complex ways of editing. But like Sean, he walks one through each technique on nature images that we all are familiar with. The last hour segment of Chip's video was especially good in that he convered exposure blending and depth of field blending on the same image. That hour alone was worth the cost of the video.

Thanks for the tip, Ken. I'll check out Chip's videos. I've always wondered what is the best approach to using DOF and exposure blending on the same image.

I'm downloading Chip's Image Editing, Volume 1 at this very moment. I know what I'll be doing tonight.