A couple of weeks ago I came across HDR Creme. It’s a site that features some of the best HDR photos. HDR is not something new to me. It always fascinated me. I knew how it was done and had all the required software from day one. I never gave it a try though because I didn’t take any ‘HDR worthwhile’ photos. Lately though, I purchased a new lens which is somehow essential for HDR. The lens is a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6, that is a wide angle lens suitable for landscapes. After some experimenting I am finally pleased with some HDR photos that I produced. Read on to see what can be achieved with HDR photography.

Example 1

After shooting my scenery I edited the photo in Photoshop CS3′s Camera Raw to have three different exposures. So the original was this (Exposure 0)

Then I lowered the exposure to -2 and produced this:

And finally from the original I increased the exposure to +2 getting the following image:

These three images were then imported into Photomatix and after a couple of tweaking I ended up with this:

Click for High Quality

As you can see the sky is now more dramatic and the building gets the effect of glowing.

Example 2

Same technique used for the following images:

The 0 Exposure

The -2 Exposure

And the +2 Exposure

Finally the end result here:

Click for High Quality

I have a couple more HDR photos uploaded. Check them out here. Some of them were reproduced from a single RAW photo where other were reproduced from 3 different exposures from the camera. The end result  is pretty much the same.

Some links of interest

This guide will show you how to use your ‘point and shoot’ camera to take HDR photos.

This guide will show you how to use Adobe Photoshop’s HDR feature.

This is the software I use (Photomatix) to reproduced all of my HDR photos. If you have some HDR photos of your own drop me a line or add me as a contact on flickr here.