A Great HDR Tutorial from Trey Ratcliffe!

Yesterday I came across Trey Ratcliffe's website and found this really great tutorial he wrote on HDR photography. He recently authored a book called "A World in HDR" which also looks amazing.

In case you don't know what HDR photography is, it's essentially a technique where the photographer shoots multiple images of the same scene at different exposure settings (1 at the regular setting, another under-exposed, another over-exposed - usually 5 images total) to capture the full "dynamic range" of light in the scene. He then uses special software to create a composite image which brings out the best-exposed sections of each of those photos, creating one single photo which represents a much fuller range of light.

That was probably confusing...

Take a look at some of Trey's photos to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.




I tried this technique on one of my photos of the Roebling suspension bridge in Cincinnati, and got some neat results.

Original

HDR Version

Go through Trey's tutorial (it will only take 30 min. to an hour), download the trial version of the software he recommends and give HDR a try. I think you'll really like it!