HDR attempt 1.5
A long time ago I attempted to create some HDR images — I don’t even remember how they turned out (hence why this is attempt 1.5). Recently I was invited to play with HDR again, plus my roommate has been bugging me for quite some time.
Let me be clear. I don’t really like HDR for the sake of creating HDR. In fact, I kind of feel like a kitten died somewhere when I started playing with HDR. In fact, kittens die all the time — probably while I’m typing this — making it statistically probable. Nevertheless, I realize that just about all pro photogs know what HDR is and how to create them, thus it’s high time that I play around creating HDR stuff so that I have an idea about what it can do even if I don’t really do it myself.
Finally, I realized that I have said “HDR ” eight times without explaining what, exactly HDR (nine) is to the non-photography readers out there. HDR (ten) stands for High Dynamic Range. This means that there is readable image information in the darkest shadows and the brightest highlights of an image. I’m sure the actual definition of HDR defines exactly how broad the range must be to qualify. Typically, in photography, an HDR image is created by compositing a few images of the same scene shot with different exposures, e.g. “correct” exposure, 1 stop up, and 1 stop down. Here’s the tricky part: modern monitors and printers can’t display the full dynamic range of an HDR so the resulting image needs to be compressed into the dynamic range of the output medium. Or something kind of like that. It’s all very technical and I don’t quite get it all at this point, but here’s what it’s useful for: If you have an image with details in very bright areas and details in very dark areas and you’d like to keep both. It’s necessary to go the HDR route if your bright area detail and dark area detail are not in locations that can be compensated for by an ND Grad filter…. or if you roommate and friends continually bug you to do so.
So I went to my local coffee shop — you know, the one I keep writing about — and took 6 series of shots with intention of doing the HDR thing with them. Obviously I need to experiment more with this proccess because it feels like I just got lucky with one — the rest didn’t turn out so well.
There was some jazz musicians doing there thing so it was a little crowded, but it also provided more subject matter.
A "normally" exposed image (actually, it's a bit dark...)
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