ProjectVISUAL

(N.B. This is Part 1 of my HDR Tutorial, Part 2 can be found here.)

It’s been one year now since I started dabbling in HDR photography and thought it was high time to put together a tutorial on the subject.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos are running rampant on the internet at the moment, so I’m going to assume you all know what is meant by the term HDR – blending multiple pictures of the same scene, shot at different shutter speeds in order to capture the full range of lights and shadows.
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OK quick example: look at the array of five images below. They’re all of the same scene, but one thing is different in all of them: each was shot at a different shutter speed. Why did I do that? Well, if you look at each photo you can see that different parts are either under, over, or properly exposed. Look at the middle photo; that’s my metered photo and was shot using a shutter speed of 1/60s and aperture of f/22 (at an ISO of 200). I was using aperture priority at the time and exposure, apart from the sky, looks OK. However, if I hadn’t been shooting with the intention of making a HDR image then I would have only taken this image and I would be left with an overexposed sky. But I also took four other images, at shutter speeds of 1/250s (1^st image), 1/125s (2^nd image), 1/30s (4^th image) and 1/15s (5^th image). Between the five images I should have the full range of lights and shadows in the scene (the first two contains details of the sky while the last two contain details in the foreground). You can see from the histogram beneath each photo that it moves from black to white as the exposure is increased so I know I’m getting the full spectrum of light.

Once you have a set of such photos, and I’ll explain the best way to do this, you can combine them together using some software like Photomatix or HDR Max, and do some touch up in Photoshop, I’ll explain all this later so don’t worry

First though, here are some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken. Just to confuse you a little more, some of these were made using just one photo – I’ll explain how that works too! I’ve included the original metered image so you can contrast it to the HDR photo; I think you’ll agree HDR can significantly umph up your portfolio!

Glendalough (Ireland)

Barcelona (Spain)

Notre Dame (France)

Barcelona (Spain)

Valletta (Malta)

OK, now you’ve seen the type of results you can achieve using HDR techniques (these photos are really tone mapped rather than high dynamic range, but to 90% of the internet population they’re called HDR so let’s not nitpick!), the next step is to run through quickly what you will need to get great results. First on the list: you need some decent HARDWARE!! Head on over to Part Two to hear what I use, and find out what the single most important feature is that you’ll need on your camera to maximise your HDR photos