For this little challenge I wanted to do two things: Study a high contrast light environment in post and see what type of results my little Fujifilm X10 can make in this harsh environment.

I took several pictures, but this one looking up and into light gave me the photo with the highest contrast between highlights and complete darkness.

I like the color range and detail rendered despite the bright light attempting to overpower both. To prevent radical blowout of highlights, and the edge areas between them, I used the camera's EXR mode with a -1.33 exposure. I ran it through Perfect Effects to help bring out some details, and extend the dynamic range with some HDR effects.

This little camera had a ton of data for the Perfect Effects to work with (much more than I anticipated). Remember, the best software in the world can do nothing if you and the camera give it bad data to work with. What you see is the result of my two minute and done rule in post.

So the moral of this story is to push the limits of a scene by taking enough shots to find one which will get the effect you want, and remember to use post processing to pull all the data out of the photo possible to give you the best image possible. A corollary to running through many perspectives is to work with other settings such as exposure compensation in each camera position to observe its effects on dynamic range and composition.

-ehw