Staircase

 

Another shot from Moody Mansion.  These were challenging photos.  Normally, this would be the perfect situation for HDR - massive dynamic range from a dark interior with bright light streaming (or screaming) through a window.  HDR was made for exactly this type of thing!  But with no tripod, slow shutter speed, and high ISO, HDR was probably going to result in a blurry, noisy image.  So I went a compromise single exposure, capturing as much shadow detail as possible while not blowing out the window too badly.  Then pulling more shadow detail from the RAW file in Photoshop.  It worked well, but I probably could have reduced the exposure a bit more because the window is still a bit more clipped than I'd prefer.