To HDR Or Not To HDR? That Is The Question.

I've been noticing a huge increase in the number of HDR images showing up lately. Some are very surreal and some are much more natural looking. I've been thinking about trying it and have been convinced that I need to by my Flickr friend The Bruce. Bruce has been dabbling in the HDR world lately and I've really liked the images he has produced. So I thought I'd give it a go. Why not.

So, I downloaded a trial of Photomatix and started to experiment. I used a single photo and outputted a normal exposure, -2 and +2 to simulate the bracketing. Hard to bracket when the wind is blowing so hard.

I took this photo of my kids on Canada Day and I like it but it's missing so much of the contrast that was there for my eyes to see. I'd like you to see more of what I saw.

The first one I completed was this one but the white flags went to gray. I love all the detail in the clouds, leaves, and the kids clothing but the flags really turned me off.

I opened it up in Lightroom and used the adjustment brush to increase the exposure on the white areas being very careful to use the auto mask feature and not bleed into the surrounding areas too much.

This one I really like. Look at the detail in their clothes. All that was lost in the original even though I used my flash. The range just was not there.

I think you can expect to see more HDR work in my Flickr stream from now on. I really like how this turned out.

Chris.