This is a photograph of my neighborhood in HDR or High Dynamic Range. This picture is actually 3 exposures merged into one image. Do you think this fad is a keeper?
Images using HDR (High Dynamic Range) seem to be popping up everywhere. An HDR image consists of 3 or more exposures, usually one or two f-stops above and below the average exposure setting. This gives both the highlights and the shadows a chance to be shown at their best. Using either software and in some cases the camera itself, the multiple exposures are combined into one, giving the final image a pretty wide (dynamic) range of exposure. What place do they have in modern photography?
If you look carefully at my example, you will see three birds near the center of the image. There was actually only one bird in flight, but the time delay between exposures caught the bird at three different places. The three pictures were merged using a free HDR program called Qtpfsqui (http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/) but there are others. Some of the image editing programs have HDR merge built right in and Photoshop plugins also exist.
So what do you think of the whole process? A lot of Flickr images are HDR. It is a fad that certainly was not around before digital photography. Some of the most recent digital cameras have HDR and its variations built in. These cameras actually claim to be able to produce a better images by exposing for shadows and highlights in the same scene. This would be very useful for nighttime photography and landscapes with dark shadows and bright skies. I look forward to seeing some very creative work done with HDR photography.
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