So what is this HDR photography anyway?

I have had quite a few people of late asking me about HDR. The usual question is a straight forward “What is HDR?”. So, in an effort to explain this a little for those of you who visit this site, I though I should give a bit of an explanation.

HDR or High Dynamic Range Photography, in basic terms, is a technique where bracketing is used in a digital camera to take several (usually 3, though it can be more or less) images of varying exposure values. These images are then merged in software to produce a single final photo that has a high, often exaggerated dynamic range of colour and light.

In my case I have been experimenting with three images. One is at a normal or near normal exposure, one is over exposed and one is under exposed. The over exposed and under exposed shots are obtained by using the auto bracketing setting on the digital camera set to +2/-2 EV.

For those who wish to find out more, there are some excellent articles at;

• Wikipedia
• Cambridge in Colour

Also, Peter Carr at Vanilla Days¹has an excellent Tutorial titled “HDR Tutorial: How to create ‘High Dynamic Range’ images using Photomatix“. It is very informative, with lots of step by step information and good advice. If you want to get into HDR then I highly recommend that you give this tutorial a read.

1. You can find out more about Peter Carr and his work at www.vanilladays.com.[<<]