HDR Merge Like an Expert in Lightroom
Handle High Contrast Scenes Like a Pro
May 5, 2026 | $115
One 90-minute session online. The session will begin at 8 PM EST. It will be recorded and made available to registered participants for 60 days. Tuition is non-refundable.
Sometimes the dynamic range of a scene is too much to capture in a single exposure. For example, landscape photos where the foreground is darker than the sky, photos taken in the middle of the day with strong light and shadows, challenging subjects, and even interiors.
You need a different tool to solve these problems, and that is where Lightroom Photo Merge HDR comes in to play. By combining several exposures, you can get detail in the brightest and darkest areas. You can also use it to create the ultimate split-neutral-density filter to capture dynamic nature scenes.
HDR has a bad reputation in some circles, and I admit I avoided it for a long time because of the garish results labeled as “HDR. ” To avoid that harsh look, I’ve used a Photoshop-based approach to handle these high dynamic range situations. But now I’ve learned that Photo Merge HDR can produce a look just as beautiful as non-HDR photos, when used properly. In fact, you might have a hard time even knowing that HDR Photo Merge was applied at all!
You will learn:
- Identifying scenes that need HDR when photographing
- How to capture an effective bracket for HDR Merging
- Camera settings to optimize capture
- Selecting which frames to merge
- Editing the Merged DNG in Lightroom
- How to create the effects of a split neutral density filter using HDR merge.
To jumpstart the process, this class includes two sets of demo files that you can use to practice merging and editing. This lets you see the techniques I teach in action, and get started right away!
Meet Your Instructor
Rich Seiling
Rich Seiling’s passion for capturing light and beauty with photography has led him on a series of adventures that have shaped his vision and view of the craft. From a stint at The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite as an assistant curator, to his pioneering work in digital printmaking, founding of a leading fine art printing studio, and 22 years living in and photographing the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada, Rich has deeply explored the vision and craft of photography while continuing to express his own vision.
He learned photography in the darkroom, seeking to make prints with the rich tonal scale exemplified by the West Coast traditions of photography. But his frustration with color processes lead him to explore digital photography starting in the early 1990s.
Combining his darkroom knowledge with digital tools led to a process for making color prints of museum quality that pushed the process to new heights. His reputation for making vibrant yet realistic digital prints allowed him to help photographers like Michael Forsberg, Galen Rowell, Jack Dykinga, Robert Glenn Ketchum, and many others, make the transition to digital fine art printing. With his team at West Coast Imaging, he has helped produce numerous museum shows, supplied prints for leading galleries, and done prepress for art books from publishers like Taschen and Houghton Mifflin.
His simple yet powerful Photoshop workflow, tested on tens of thousands of prints at WCI, is in use by many top professionals, and has been taught to countless students across the country through workshops and lectures.
Working in both black & white and color, Rich strives to capture the profound beauty of nature and communicate it through vibrant, and sometimes large, prints. He considers himself a student of light, discovering its qualities and how it communicates the inherent realities of a subject, often seeking out fleeting moments of rare light that make the landscape sing its own voice.
Driven by the belief that each photographer has a unique story only they can tell, Rich teaches the art of photography through workshops and articles. His goal is to help students unlock their potential to tell their own stories by helping them gain control of the craft, expand their vision, and most of all, to experience the enrichment and joy that photography brings.
Rich lives just outside Nashville with his wife and creative partner Susan, and his three children.
You can see more of his photography at richseiling.com and read his blog for photographers at craftingphotographs.com.