Have you ever gone out to take a picture of the greatest sunset the likes that no one has ever seen or even thought possible to capture with a camera? The perfect vantage point is picked, everything is set up, the sun is finally beginning to set, you start clicking away until your finger is cramping, and all your memory cards are full. While heading home all you can think about is how big you are going to print this masterpiece and where should it be displayed for all to see. But once the process has begun of retrieving the pictures, an inconceivable trend starts to form. Not one single picture is a beautiful or stunning as you remember. The hills in the foreground are too dark, the sunset is washed out, there is not enough detail in the foreground when there is a perfect sunset in the background. Anger sets in, you start a fire and slowly throw each memory card in, followed by your tripod and camera. As the flames melt and burn everything, you think to yourself, what else could I have done?

High Dynamic Range Photography is a post-processing technique that uses multiple images of the same scene shot at different shutter speeds to combine the all into single photograph. I’m going to focus primarily on the photography portion of the process.

What you need:

• Digital Camera
  • Must have manual setting that allow exposure adjustment
• Tripod
  • The sturdier, the better
• Image Editing Software
  • Adobe Photoshop is probably the most popular
• Specific HDR Software is Optional
  • Photoshop has an HDR import, but there are other HDR specific applications that have far more capabilities than Photoshop alone.

How to shoot:

• Aperture Must Stay the Same
  • Lock in a setting that has the greatest depth of field
• Start with an Exposure Setting that is Good for the Entire Photograph
  • Balanced brightness and darkness
  • Even contrast throughout the picture
• Shoot Photo in a Bracket (The tricky part)
  • Some cameras you can set up to do this automatically
  • The idea is to start with the settings you picked for the good photo. This is your 0.
• The most common practice is to do 5 brackets: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2

The toughest task is doing this without moving the camera, while taking the shots in a quick burst to prevent anything in the scene from moving.

There are a bunch of different editing techniques depending on what type of software you decide to use. So get out there, take the greatest sunset photo ever with HDR, and don’t light your expensive photography equipment on fire.

photo by Anto-XII

photo by Kevin Crafts

photo by Matthew Sullivan