I'm in Washington this week, about 80 miles North of Seattle, and the daffodils (...and a few tulips) are in bloom. I was shooting flower shots at a place near La Conner, Washington, called Christensen's Nursery, when these seriously old trucks were pointed out to me.With a bright, overcast sky overhead, and dark shadows underneath, these trucks were good candidates for a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image. With digital cameras, you sometimes have to choose between lost shadow detail or a blown out, overexposed sky. Using HDR, you can sometime save detail in both.
Using Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB), I took three images, one exposed properly, one overexposed by one stop, and one underexposed by one stop. I then blended these three images together, using a specialized HDR software called Photomatix.
The blended HDR image was then converted to a simple TIF file and final editing was completed in Photoshop. HDR blending can produce some surrealistic, high contrast images with vivid colors. Typically they can produce a more "painterly" look than you might see with your naked eye. But, they can also produce an image that is closer to what your eye actually sees dynamically, with more detail in the highlights and more detail in the shadows than a digital camera can normally see.
Click on this image, if you'd like to see a larger version.
-CG TTL
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