Since my first point and shoot <$100 camera I got for a door prize at my high school prom after party/lock in (which we soon walked out of....) I found out that: "Whoa! If I change my exposure levels really high at night, the camera has to take a picture for a really long time to compensate, and the picture looks really cool!" I was taking the best pictures I could possibly take with that little beast.
Example:
It was a very much appreciated prize to win. If I hadn't gone to that teenage milestone they call, prom (Something I hadn't much of an interest in doing), would I be the same aspiring photographer I am today?
Since my days with the prize Kodak, I moved up to a Nikon P90. This camera was the best possible camera I could have stepped up to. Not too much to learn, not to little to get bored. This thing has some serious zoom to it. It did an awesome job in long exposure, and the tilt screen was just icing on the cake! PERFECT for being in a crowded area, just a 45 degree tilt down, hold above your head, and you can get awesome shots without any blind aiming! It also tilted straight up, so you could have the camera sitting on the ground and you could look straight down on the screen! Got many good shots of my sleeping puppy that way.
Now that I have stepped into the realm of the DSLR, my options and abilities have exponentially grown. long exposure? I have the ability to use the stars to know which direction the earth is spinning.
STAR TRAILS!
I haven't personally accomplished this just yet, but here is my motivation:
This stuff will blow your mind. GOOGLE IT!
Anyways enough camera history, back to HDR.
What is HDR?
(You're on the internet, a place of infinite knowledge, everything is a Google search away...but I'll go ahead and post a definition for you!)
"HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a set of techniques that allows the opportunity for a greater dynamic range of exposures through digital imaging techniques. It captures the full range of luminosity between light and dark in a single scene. What this means in terms of photography is that the processing of HDR captures everything from dark shadows to bright highlights and combines it into a single image."
HDR really allows you to bring back the emotion you felt while seeing your subject in reality before shooting. Don't you hate it when you get back from a trip and think you got some amazing pictures, and when you show them to friends and family, they just don't seem to "pop" as much as you remembered? HDR really allows you to get your pictures looking that much closer to how it actually looked through your eyes.
I don't think any photograhy can ever compare to seeing something grand in person. There are many things that are embedded into your memories. You can take a billion HDR shots of the beach, but if you show them all to someone who has never been seen the ocean in person, they won't know what it is like to have the sand between their toes, or that amazing smell of seasalt in the air.
Though digital images, and what you see with your own eyes aren't the same, HDR photography really bridges the gap of the two.
Here is a before and after image of HDR:
Before:
After:
Check him out HERE
So after being in sheer awe of this magical method of photography, I tried it out for the very first time.
This is just a picture of my house, about 9:20 AM. This is my very first attempt at HDR photography, and I am actually quite pleased with how it turned out for being my literal FIRST attempt.
Just for reference, here is one of the frames before HDR was applied:
I am about ready to throw on my headphones, and go get some more interesting subjects to frame.
No comments:
Post a Comment