Welcome to HDR Photography – Bob’s World in HDR!

For those not familiar with HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, it’s a method to capture a scene that displays an image with greater dynamic range, closer to the way our eyes see an image. By dynamic range I mean the number of shades between black and white that can be displayed. Increasing the dynamic range increases detail in areas of a photo that would usually be in darker shadow areas or burned out highlighted areas. Multiple exposures are taken with varied exposures, lighter and darker than what your camera deems is the “proper” exposure. Picture details of each photo are combined to form what we refer to as a tone mapped image. Over the next few posts I’ll share some of my techniques and the software I use.

HDR photos need not always be about garish color or “cartoonish” looks. Here, I used 5 exposures to bring out sky detail and some color on what was a very overcast day. This shot was taken in Osaka, Japan while on a business trip in April, 2009.

This photo was shot with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1, created from 5 RAW images, processed with HDR MAX.