HDR Photography Photo Workshop

Sample Photos from the Authors (Click on images to enlarge)

The Echo Wheel of Liverpool
Liverpool has plenty of fun architecture to play with and always looks stunning at dusk. The Echo Wheel of Liverpool makes for an interesting photo here with Pizza Express on the left. You may look at the scene and wonder why it needed HDR so I'm going to explain.



Neon lighting can often come out over-exposed in photos. Looking at the original image straight out of camera and you can see a couple of issues. The base of the wheel is a little over-exposed while the ground around Pizza Express is under-exposed. The neon on the wheel and the sign are both over-exposed just barely hinting at the blue colour.

To get the material needed for a decent HDR image I used a tripod, auto bracket exposure mode (AEB) and took 9 photographs at various settings. The string of exposures were -4/-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3/+4. That gave me plenty of material to work with. You can see the original out of camera image below.



I loaded the images into Photomatix and selected my starting point preset. This increases the luminosity a bit to flatten the contrast of the image, bringing clarity to over-exposed and under-exposed areas. I boosted the gamma a little for overall brightness and tweaked the black and white points for contrast, being careful not to blow the highlights. I almost always keep lighting adjustments at maximum for a realistic look (Natural+). You can see the result of tone mapping in Photomatix below.



Going back to the first image you can see that there's more colour in the sunset and the neons. It may be a small thing but HDR helps you nail those small details to tidy up a shot.

Exposure Info:
16mm lens setting
f/8, ISO 200, 1 second
exposure compensation +/- 0

Tools Used:
Nikon D700
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8
Tripod
Remote shutter button

Copyright Pete Carr

Arundel Cathedral, West Sussex.
I've yet to visit a boring and dull cathedral. They're always amazing and breathtaking to behold. God knows his architecture.



I've been in larger cathedrals that seem to disappear off into the shadows. Arundel isn't that big but has a few hoops to jump through. The issue I had here was the large windows. I didn't want them to lose too much detail and I also wanted to get a bit more detail in the pews and impressive organ at the far end of the cathedral. As a perfectionist I simply refused to lose any detail.

To get the material needed for a decent HDR image I used a tripod, auto bracket exposure mode (AEB) and took 9 photographs at various settings. The string of exposures were -4/-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3/+4. That gave me plenty of material to work with. You can see the original out of camera image below.



I loaded the images into Photomatix and selected my starting point preset. This increases the luminosity a bit to flatten the contrast of the image, bringing clarity to over-exposed and under-exposed areas. The detail was nicely retained in the windows and brought out more in the pews and organ. I tweaked the black and white points for contrast, being careful not to blow the highlights. I almost always keep lighting adjustments at maximum for a realistic look (Natural+). You can see the result of tone mapping in Photomatix below.



Afterwards I put the image into Lightroom for some tweaking. I added a bit of a vignette to darken the edge, tweaked the white balance and increased the contrast a little. The idea was to make the centre of the image come to life. That's where the eye is drawn, down the aisle to the grand window and organ.

Exposure Info:
14mm lens setting
f/13, ISO 200, 0.6 seconds
exposure compensation +/- 0

Tools Used:
Nikon D700
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.
8 Tripod
Remote shutter button

Copyright Pete Carr