HDR – High Dynamic Range Photos

I love HDR, some people hate it.. a bit like Marmite, but not at all like Marmite..

HDR is basically three photos, one dark, one light, one in the middle (underexposed, overexposed and a control…) you then layer the photos in an HDR suite and adjust settings to bring out the highlights, shadows and other various effects.

Trafalgar Square fountain - West side, near to Canada House in HDR

You can really go as crazy, or as conservative as you like with HDR, the hatred for it stems with ‘overdone‘ HDR, photos that look way too unreal..

Summer in a Different Light - HDR of the BFI in Southbank

I think HDR takes talent and skill, not even to just produce good images, but the whole process – you need a tripod and a shutter release, minimum, to make sure that all three images you take are of exactly the same scene. It’s a planned day out, you can’t really just do it on a whim.

A building in my home village Ruskington that was up for sale

Now, if you own two Canon EOS 5D’s – then the next level is video – Soviet Montage have put together a nice little video that shows how capable the 5D is for more than photography.

Clouds produce fantastic effects in HDR

What I love most about HDR, is that you can emphasise the various elements in a photo that would otherwise be lost in a JPG, or point and shoot.

Near St. Pauls Cathedral in London

Storm over Barcelona

This was taken in 2009 at the very top of Park Guell in Barcelona, Gaudi’s park – for those that have been there it’s where the big stone cross is. On the day me and some friends reached this and turned around to see a huge storm brewing over (luckily) where we had originally intended to be at around that time – the storm centres just up the beach from the Olympic Village. It didn’t last for long, there was some lightning, but oddly enough when we turned around there was nearly not a cloud in the sky in the other direction.. A perfect storm which I will now always remember.

Storm over Barcelona