HDR Photography

Buenas noches (or dias)  beautiful, blissful, brilliant, bold, bright, people who probably have a black bear named Bob (sorry about that last part at the time I wrote this I was very board)! Today I'm writing about a new project we've been working on; HDR photography! Here I'll explain what it is and when your done reading this you'll be an expert!

HDR photography (or High Dynamic Range photography) is a type of photography used to capture better color. Instead of just taking one photo, when doing HDR photography you take take multiple and join them together in a design software such as Adobe Photoshop. Also you take each photo at different exposures to get the best photo you can. I like that when you use HDR photography your final product looks prettier and more professional. But, I don't like how you have to take multiple pictures of something because if you don't want ghosts (blurry spots in your image where the multiple photos overlap).

To create an HDR image there are some steps you must take a number of different photos of the same subject (you have to make sure your camera or subject doesn't move very much to prevent ghosts). For our HDR project, we took seven pictures overall ( I definitely recommend 7 photos by the way :). Then you load all the photos into a design program like Photoshop. Once your there, you edit your photos to be get rid of any ghosts and make it surreal (Or not. Just go with whatever you are trying to achieve and play around with the editing tool!). Then you just save your final picture(s) and you're done! I imagine most of you reading this have a smartphone or camera that has a HDR photo mode. I use this option a lot for taking my pictures and they usually come out with great color! The difference between actual HDR and automatic HDR is, well, how much work you put in to taking your photo(s). With automatic all you to do is take 1 picture and there you go. But, you cant edit it or make it your own. With normal (manual) you have to several pictures and be extra careful but you get a better result.

My thought process for all the photos I take in one word is original. When ever I take a photo I try to capture everything in a different perspective. For my landscape shot I purposely broke the rule of thirds and put the tree in the center of the image. I wanted to incorporate leading lines to the tree so I placed it on a picnic table. Also I really love reflection shots; I loved the way the sky and the building reflected back onto the table! When I was taking my profile shot I again didn't use the rule of thirds. I am officially a rule breaker (yeah not really)! This time I was actually trying to but when I joined all of the pictures together it through it off. I wanted to make it so the viewer was looking at Maddie (my amazing friend who helped me with this) from the point of view of the table. I definitely could could have a lot better in doing this but I think it still gives you the idea.

Well I hoped you enjoyed reading this post about HDR photography! One of my next posts will be about the next stage of our photography projects, Double Exposed Imagery (examples)! Thanks for coming to my blog and I'll write again soon!