HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography pt 3 (Peter's Photo Blog)

I've had some more time to work on my HDR photos lately. I've learned a thing or two about HDR since my first attempts.

Mainly, the more contrast there is in a scene, the better the image is going to look. If the image was flat to begin with, HDR isn't going to add that much to the photo. All three of the images below have a large exposure range and the results are better than my first attempts.

This first shot was taken out of my window (the same shot I did in my original HDR post).

Above you can see the top the 3 JPG images that were merged to form the final image. Either the skyline is very dark in these images, or the sky is blown out.

This is the photo that the camera metered for me and how a conventional shot would have come out.

This is the final HDR image. I ran the 3 files through photomatix, then did some minor clone brushing and levels in Photoshop.

Compare this image to the image I took 3 months ago of the same scene. There was less contrast in this scene when I originally took it, and somehow the colors look a bit unnatural.

The next two images were taken on a trail at the bottom of Enchanted Rock. Notice in all of the original photos how either the forest is underexposed or the sky is over exposed. These are the perfect conditions to get a good image out of HDR (a lot of range in the exposure). Notice how there is a lot of detail in the sky and the forest in both of the next images.

This second shot was actually taken hand held without a tripod. You can still do HDR w/o a tripod if you can hold the camera extremely steady. For the first image I set the camera down on my camera bag instead of mounting the camera on tripod as well.