NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/654753
60 NEBRASKAland • APRIL 2016 My Photo Tip: HDR Photography Use high dynamic range photography to open up landscape photos. By Jenny Nguyen I magine. There's a beautiful sunset or sunrise in front of you. The clouds are highlighted, showing gorgeous purples and pinks. The foreground is bathed in warm light and illuminated just right. You want to capture the moment by taking a photo. If you shoot in Auto mode, there's no telling what your photo will look like. But let's say you'd like your foreground to be in focus, so you pick an AF point somewhere in the foreground and take the photo. After reviewing, you'll quickly realize that what you're seeing on the camera LCD screen is nowhere close to what your eyes are seeing in front of you; while the foreground is adequately exposed, your sky has been completely washed out. So you might try to expose for the sky, but then the exact opposite happens. Though your sky is exposed correctly, your foreground is now hidden in a big blob of indeterminate shadow. We've all been there. Why isn't your camera seeing a scene the same way your eyes do? There's a simple answer for that – cameras are nowhere near as advanced as our eyes, as far as being able to simultaneously adjust to a wide range of lighting conditions in a single environment. To compensate for this lack of adjustability, high dynamic range (HDR) photography has become a go-to technique for many. HDR photography is taking two or more images of various exposures and merging them together to get one perfectly exposed image. To do this, you will need a tripod and editing software, such as Photomatix, Easy HDR or Photoshop. My Canon 5D Mark III has decent built-in HDR capability that is quite easy to use. I tell the camera to take three different exposures of the same scene, and then it instantly gives me the final blended image in jpeg format. If your camera doesn't have this capability, adjust the exposure value (EV) compensation feature on your camera to manually take three photos of the same scene. Underexpose the first photo, choose an exposure that's in the middle for the second photo, then overexpose the first photo. For example, this final picture taken at Niobrara State Park is actually three images merged together. The first image was taken at EV -1, the second at EV 0, and the third at EV +1. By blending all three exposures – either with a HDR- capable camera or with HDR software on your computer, the result is an image that retains details in both the sky and foreground. This is also a good technique for taking photos inside buildings to find a happy medium between harsh light streaming through windows and dark interiors. The real estate industry loves HDR photography. But as cool and useful as HDR photography is, it does have its place. Not all scenarios require this technique. There are too many HDR photos floating around on the internet that don't even look like they were taken on planet earth, made worse by the tendency of many photographers to over edit. This is just one technique that can help you close the gap between what you see in real life and what you can show in a photo. Use it wisely. ■ A HDR blended image of Niobrara State Park at sunset in Knox County. The three images used were taken at EV -1, EV 0 and EV +1 at f/11.