HDR Photography - made easy!

HDR or High Dynamic Range imaging creates a whole new world of possibilities for a photographer to be creative. You can't just ignore a HDR photograph. It "stands out" from other photographs. Now, not many professionals do HDR often. But some people, like Trey Ratcliff, for instance, create quite a stir with their beautiful, and dream-like HDR photos..

Assuming you clicked the links, (if not do it now! It's really AWESOME!), you must be thinking, "How is it possible? I mean, we all use cameras.. How's that I cannot shoot HDR photos? " Do you need a DSLR to shoot HDRs? Not really. Any point-and-shoot would do the trick!
This tutorial guides you through the making of HDR photographs..

The technique:

The technique behind making a HDR photograph is to combine multiple images, of different exposures. What happens is, you combine the best elements of each photograph and the resulting image is a combination of all the photographs.. 

There are a few things that you require to create a beautiful HDR image.

1. A camera that has manual mode, or AEB(Auto Exposure Bracketing)
2. A tripod is recommended, since even the slightest movement of the camera would spoil the image.
3. To combine the images, you'll need a software. Now you will be thinking about Photoshop, but actually, Photomatix Pro is a better and easier post-processing software for HDR. Here's the link to Download Photomatix.

 Auto Exposure Bracketing(AEB)

The next part is to shoot the photograph. If you have a DSLR, or if your camera has AEB, you can easily shoot three/five { -3,-2,-1,0,+1,+2,+3} photographs of different exposures. If you don't have AEB in your camera, switch to Manual mode. With your camera on the tripod, shoot photos-like the ones above-with three different exposure levels. The important point if you shoot manually, is that the images should vary ONLY in the shutter speed, with constant Aperture and ISO. Do not change either of them. If you have no idea what SUTEER SPEED, APERTURE and ISO mean, see more about the Exposure triangle.. In either of the cases, you need to select the lowest ISO possible. Mainly because HDR post-procesing brings out a lot of noise, and you want to minimize the noise in the shot as far as possible. Now that you have the 6 images, import them into your computer and you're good to go.

Merging and Editing in Photomatix

Install Photomatix Pro in your computer. Open it and then select Load Bracketed photos and then select the photos you have imported. Select the Align source images check-box and the other pre-processing options that are listed. But the more you select, the longer it will take to merge the photos. The next step is where you first see the merged image. A lot of preset thumbnails are available to you there. Experiment with them. And on the left side to the image, you'll have the Adjustments window. There are quite a lot of sliders present there-Strength, Saturation, White point, Black point, Lighting adjustments and a variety of other stuff - depending on the preset you have selected. You'll have an idea about what happens when you experiment with each of the values. Just remember - There's no RIGHT way to set these values. You're free to mix everything up!

But just remember a few points..

• " Don't overdo it. ". A good HDR photogarph isn't necessarily one with high saturation and with halos behind the subject. It shouldn't look artificial. The whole point of HDR processing is to portray what our eyes see, surpassing the technical limitiations of the camera.
• A good practice would be to ask a second opinion or take a fresh look at the processed photo again. The photorgaph must be appealing and not off-putting.
   
• If you don't understand what every slider means, take a minute and read the description in the box below. You'll do better if you know what you're doing.
  
  
• Don't just kick everything up a notch. Try to keep it simple, and yet, different from other photographs.
• You can even save your values as a preset to use it next time around. 

Now that all the adjustments are done, Click Process. Voilà. There it is! Your HDR photograph. By the time you've edited it yourself, you'll know, how a HDR photo differs from other photographs. You can reduce the noise in you HDR photograph by using Noise reduction in Photoshop.

Here are some of my own HDR photographs..

  






 

Do give this a try! It's so easy and awesome once you start doing it too!