Graduated Filters in Lightroom

I wanted to try out the graduated filter setting in Lightroom, so I took two photos from the evening of August 30 that I took up at the airport during my work study shift, and applied the graduated filter to different parts of each picture. I've included the originals for comparison.





I like the exposure of the airplane and ramp in the foreground, but the sky is a little too blown out. I used the graduated filter to reduce the exposure of the sky 1.87 stops. The result is below:



The photo feels more natural and balanced, and more representative of what the scene actually looked like to the human eye.








This second photo has a nice exposure on the sunset and sky, but the foreground and airplane are underexposed, so I used the graduated filter again to increase the foreground exposure (I don't recall how many stops):



Again, the difference is fairly subtle, but really adds to the natural feeling of the photo.

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