HDR photos

Photography is an ever changing world. Especially with the digital era beginning - it just opens up the doors for all sorts of new things. And one of the new things I've been playing around with are High Dynamic Range [HDR] images.

According to wikipedia, HDR imaging is "a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight."

Unfortunately, you can't really shoot an HDR image in camera yet. They are starting to make cameras with this option, but for now - the best way to achieve the HDR quality is to do it in post-processing. There are several different options available to convert your plain-jane images to HDR-spectacular images - the most authentic being : you shoot several different images - all having different exposures. Some high, some low, and some in the middle. Then, you bring them back into PhotoShop & merge them all together. That would be a true HDR image. However, this requires the camera be on a tripod & the subject to not move through the entire series of images. And, if you're like me, you don't typically carry a tripod with you & so to get the exact same shot with several different exposures is super hard.

So, you can get around that - by tweaking a single image in PhotoShop & AdobeBridge. Once again, there are multiple ways of doing this - but all of the roads tend to lead to about the same result.

HDR images are amazing because they lighten the lighter colors and darken the darker colors. That may not sound very impressive - but it is the ability to turn images that may be amazing anyway - into something that is WOW! HDR images tend to have a fairy tale-magical-whimsical feel to them - let me show you:

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER:

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER: [like I said - whimsical]

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER:

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER:

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) : [notice how little detail there is in the water..]

AFTER:

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER:

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER:

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) : [this spot is actually right up the hill from where Derrick & I got engaged!]

AFTER: [doesn't this feel like a fairy tale land?]

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER: [one of my favorite photos I took at Disney]

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER:

BEFORE (straight out of the camera) :

AFTER: