Creating an HDR

I have in a previous post talked a bit about HDR photography, High Dynamic Range photography.  In this post I wanted to show the steps used to create the final photo.

These photos were taken recent at Nordic Fest in Decorah, IA.

HDR photos are composite photos. They are created from several photos that are the same except for the f stop. Ideally you try to have nothing change except for the aperture of the lens but if you are outside there might be small movement and the software can help merge things so you do not see "ghosts" created by this movement. There are times however you might want these "ghosts" for artistic reasons.

To compile the photos takes special software. The one I use is photomatrix and I have been happy with it. There are other programs and they are also very good.

I use 3 bracketed shots for my HDRs because this is what my camera has in its software for bracketing photos. There is software available that can do up to 10 bracketed photos and you can also do it manually as well.

The first photo taken for the HDR, this is according to the software in my camera is the one at the correct aperture.

The second photo is underexposed. I set my camera for 2 stops under the first shot.

The third shot is overexposed by 2 stops from the first shot.

After I have taken the photos I download them to my computer and then import them into photomatrix. I do not edit these at all before importing them. I wait until after I have created the composite photo. Once I import them into the program I then choose a style that I want to continue editing the image with. I have found that I tend to use the painterly setting the most and then adjust the image further as needed moving the adjustment slides till I like what I see. After I am done with the merging of the images I may then do further editing in photoshop elements if I feel the image needs cropping or any other edits.

Here is the HDR I created from the 3 photos above.

As you can clearly see the HDR has all the details from the 3 images creating an image that the camera is not able to take with one image and in this case there is more drama in the final photo because of having the full range of highlights and shadows and all the details that were captured in each image that others bracketed shots were not able to capture.