HDR tutorial

This afternoon we had a tutorial on HDR photography in preparation for our shoot tomorrow at the Palace Theatre. Before the session this afternoon I had heard of HDR photography but never knew what it actually was. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range imaging which can represent a greater range of luminance levels. It also makes the images look more vibrant and enhanced.

We learned that there were two ways of creating a HDR image. The first way is by using Photomatix and Camera Raw together. To start with you need to shoot in Raw and open the pictures in Camera Raw and change the exposure up two stops and down two stops of the original image and then save the three seperate images. Select all three images and drag them into Photomatix which will create a HDR image automatically. The other way to do it is to do it manually by using the light meter on the camera. You do the same as what you do on Camera Raw by changing the stops on the pictures but you do it manually yourself. I tried it myself and I found that by doing it through Camera Raw and Photomatix was an easy way to do it.

The image above is the original image that I used which has the correct exposure but the image underneath is the edited HDR image. You can see the difference the editing makes because by using HDR it makes the colours come out more that on a camera you wouldn't see as well. I enjoyed the session but I don't think I will be turning all of my images into HDR's.