Two day study in light in our backyard. The sun was out and in most cases caused high contrast and bright lights. I used two approaches. One was to use a fill flash(high-speed sync. with high camera shutter speeds, i.e. 1/1600 sec.) in order to lighten the shadow, therefore decreasing the contrast and adjusting exposure/brightness accordingly. The second approach was to shoot using the Sony A77's capability to shoot in-camera HDR. Three shots are fired within less than a half second of -2 f-stop bias, 0, and +2 f-stop bias. Shadow exposures are set based on the +2 bias expose and the highlights are set using the -2 bias exposures. The in-camera processors processes the output of one HDR Jpeg from the 3-exposures.

Subjects in a bright, high-contrast, non-diffused light with light and/or highly reflective surfaces are particularly hard to deal with in photography. These make for good practice for shooting birds from the High Island blind this Spring on bright, sunny days. My backyard is oriented just like the situation at the blind.