HDR Photography – Grand Canyon

I want to talk a little about HDR Photography in this post, however, I want to preface this by saying, in my opinion, when it comes to photography, nothing beats a well composed image that uses fantastic lighting (natural or studio lighting) that requires very little post production. This is just a technique I want to explore as part of my photography.

HDR Photography, an acronym for ‘High Dynamic Range’ generally means a processing technique allowing a greater dynamic range of luminance between the light and dark areas of an image than is usually found in most digital imaging techniques. Theoretically it means you can process an image that accurately represents the image you saw in your head when composing your shot. It’s become a very popular technique over the past few years with the increased populaiorty of DSLR’s with auto bracketing features and has literally flooded the photo sharing sites with very mixed outcomes.

Creating such a high dynamic range is very hard to do from one image, so HDR images combine usually a series 3 or more photographs taken at different exposures (under exposed, normal, and over exposed). It is possible to take one exposure if you shoot in RAW and use software (such as photomatix pro) to automatically recreate 3 exposures, which is exactly what the above photo is.

There is definitely a love/hate relationship with HDR photography among certain photographers. To some, such as one of the real ambassadors of HDR photography, stuckincustoms, HDR photography helps the photos look more “evocative” while others see it as being very overdone, far too over processed and generally looking too chromatic. Just take one look at the popular HDR group on Flickr and you will see many terrible looking examples of HDR photograpy. HDR photography is certainly used professionally where 3 or more exposures are used to create what your eyes would normally see, such as in office environments where the outside light is much brighter than the inside light. An almost ‘proper‘ use of the combination of multiple exposures if you will.

I personally don’t class the really over processed and ‘trippy’ photographs as being true HDR as I feel it completely misses the point. To me, some of the reasons I can enjoy certain HDR photography is that I feel it adds a new sense of drama, creates a sense of surrealism, helps certain elements ‘pop’ and a creates a unique representation of that fantastic scene you saw that day. All these factors in my opinion make a great HDR image.

A good example is the photo above. It was around 4.30pm on an extremely sunny and light day on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. All the clouds were hovering over the south rim causing a  fairly interesting scene, however, the light was just too much and exposing on the shadows created a white blanket of a sky, and exposing on the sky gave a very dark Grand Canyon – your typical situation on a bright sunny day. My options were to wait until the magic hour (which we of cousre did anyway!) or experiment with HDR photography. As we were doing some hiking, my gear at the time was limited and I did not have a tripod. I set my camera to shoot in RAW knowing I could potentially rescue certain areas of the image to recreate 3 exposures and I shot away. The Grand Canyon makes a very interesting place to experiment with HDR as there is so much detail to each wall of the canyons including grass, trees, rocks, bumps, nooks, crannies, etc, so the clairty of each element just pops – especially when shadows are getting long, and the light is dropping adding an extra level of drama to the scene.

The original photo was very bland, with the shadows being very dark and the blues of the sky were washed out. To be honest, this photo was taken with my first ever DSLR when I was first learning the ropes so I may have had some settings wrong, but I was using a ND filter to help the exposure. So to me, this is where I feel HDR benefits my photography (at times). I had a beautiful scene in front of me, but I could not do it justice with 1 bland exposure, even with some post processing I couldn’t make an image I had hoped. My HDR technique allowed me to bring out the details in the highlights and shadows to bring the image to life – exactly how I remember it in my memories.

Now, this certainly isn’t my best photo from the Grand Canyon, but it illustrates my point of why sometimes I enjoy playing around with the HDR technique – I do think however that it is a little over processed…

What are your thoughts on HDR photography?