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HDR Photography

I’ve just learnt about High Dynamic Range photography today, which is a style of photography that accentuates colours and contrasts in vivid detail.  Here’s an example:

hdr_example

Isn’t that just awesome?  Here’s another example:

hdr_example2

These are the kinds of things that I’ve wanted to do for years now, to get some extraordinary colours and contrasts out of my photos. I’ve learnt how I can now do that, so I’m going to start this weekend.

In the meantime, I found a website that transforms ordinary jpg’s into HDR-type images.  Here’s an example of what I’ve done to a couple images of my own:

street street2

In the second photo, the colours are clearer, and there’s less shadow…

Let’s try one more…

operahouse operahouse1

Can you see the difference? I certainly can – and I love it!

So the above examples of my own were done using some web software that you can use too. Go here – Create HDR.  Be warned… I had better luck uploading photos ‘from the web’ than I did from ‘upload photo’, which doesn’t seem to work.  If you use ‘from the web’ you’ll have to make sure your photos are already online, and you just give the HDR site the URL to your photo. It’ll do the rest.

The way to create these kinds of photos manually is to take 3 photos of a scene, in relatively quick succession. Each photo is set at a different exposure value – one is underexposed, one is normal, and the other is overexposed. Then you use some software (eg. Photoshop or Photomatix) to bring the photos together as one. The different exposures brought together create a very dynamic image.

Expect to see some work from me in this area in the near future!  🙂


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