Consistent equalization on set of images

I want to use exposure.equalize_adapthist() on a set of images, but a defined part of each image occasionally will have a very bright object in it, which I would like to ignore when calculating the equalization. Currently, the images with the very bright object are much darker than the images without it. Really, one of two solutions would work, but I don't know how to do either with scikit-image: 1) Calculate a histogram equalization for the entire set of images and apply the same equalization to each one 2) Mask the area with the bright object, calculate the equalization of the rest of the image, and apply that equalization to the original image. Are either possible? Thanks!