I’ve been playing around with still photography as a hobby. I’ve got a Canon XTi Digital SLR with a few lenses…nothing too fancy, but it gets the job done. My friend Lee and I went down to the Colorado College campus a couple Saturdays ago to have some photography fun and took some photos at Shove Chapel. We learning a technique called High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. Essentially you take at least three different exposures of the same shot and then combine them to form an image that is more like what the human eye sees but also something that can become a very stylized image. I’ve included the original, unretouched regular exposure of the chapel exterior and two versions where I combined three exposures of the same shot and manipulated the saturation, contrast, and gamma curve to create alternate HDR versions. The last shot is an HDR composite of the interior.
-
- Normal exposure with no color correction
-
- HDR version 1 – looking kind of like a sketch
-
- HDR version 2 with heavy manipulation
-
- HDR version of interior at Shove Chapel
I’m enjoying learning more about what all is possible with photography. With digital photography and software tools like Apple’s Aperture, Adobe’s Photoshop, and Photomatix it’s amazing what can be done. HDR is just one technique that I’m learning and I’m looking forward to figuring out more. I’m heading to Arizona in April and am looking forward to shooting some landscapes in the Sedona area. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot to learn and not enough time to play. Anyone want to send me a grant so I can go take more pictures?
