Its been a number of years since i last played with High Dynamic Range photography, but I read a recent post by Stammy that opened the can of worms again for me.

I picked-up the camera and walked out to take a few shots.

My setup was the Nikon D70 (yes, in know,its VERY old now) and a lovely 12-24 Tokina Wide-angle that ive had for a year or two, along with the obligatory tripod.

Im not going to go into the How’s, What’s and Why’s of HDR as Stammy does a way better job.

I took shots at different locations, but im going to focus on one composition to illustrate the process as an example of what HDR looks like for me

Here’s the three brackets shots and the final HDR version.

Under

On exposure

Over

The HDR

Now in reality, these shots dont do a very good job exploiting what HDR has to offer, they lack foreground detail and the natural landscape looks more hyper-real than a cityscape or urban setting.

But you ge the idea.

Once you have the thee exposures, you can sit and tweak away for hours and create a widely varied set of results.

What I’ve come to realise is – I’m not that big a fan of HDR. The over produced look of it is useful for a few occasions, but its not my cup of tea for most jobs. For example the subtle tonal variations of the sunset on the ‘On exposure’ shot are lost when the balance of the light in the rest fo the frame is changed – I know you could tweak away with this for hours, but I like the dark, moody feeling it brings to the table.

You need to figure these things out for yourself… go take it for a spin.