Monday, September 15, 2014

Experimenting with HDR

When I got my new camera last August, I noticed it had an option for HDR (High Dynamic Range) so I thought I would give it a try.  HDR photography is where you take several shots with different exposures of the same scene and put them together, one over the other.  That way you can incorporate all of the exposures together to result in a photo with more even lighting.  My camera's HDR setting will automatically put three different exposures together.  This is definitely the easy way! This is especially helpful with landscape scenes where the land is darker and the sky is lighter.  If you do it right, you end up with a photo that looks more like real life, but you can over do it too!  I still have a lot to learn, I've only tried it out three times in all!



These three pictures are ones I took on an early heavy-dew June morning.  My favorite would be the one above, as the wheat isn't quite as blue looking as the other two.  I also like the framing of the trees and the clouds.  I did a slight edge vignette to help draw the eye in to the center of the photograph.






Because the dew was so heavy, it caused the wheat to have a "frosted" look, even though there wasn't any frost.



This one also has a slight vignette.

 I'm definitely looking forward to the options HDR presents, along with the challenge of learning how to use it better to achieve the look I want.

Have you ever used HDR before?  Which picture is your favorite of the three?  What's your favorite thing to photograph?