[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by W9TR

Excellent pics! You definitely brought the outside in on many of these pics. The dynamic range is super high - the sunlit windows contrasted with inside shadow detail - very technical indeed! Well done.
Tom

Thank, Tom. Yes, those are called "window pulls" and there is a very specific way I light and shoot the window to do that. I specifically aim and fire my off-camera flash at the area around the window with a fairly fast shutter speed. That will show the detail of the scene outside but the flash inside may look too bright for an natural looking light. But, and here's the trick, If those pixels around the window are brighter than the scene outside, then when I add in the window pull layer into my layer stack in Photoshop, if I change the blending mode to Darken rather than normal, I can simply "paint in' the detail and exposure of the scene outside with a "white" paint brush into the layer mask window and all the detail outside will come in and it will still look natural. The key thing is it saves a tremendous amount time not having to make selections around windows, blinds, plants, door frames, etc.

This photo is a good example of that...