I first heard of HDR imaging several months ago. I liked some of the photos I saw. They have the tendency to look gaudy or synthetic, but when properly executed, look very nice. Since then, I’ve discovered that some photographers are against this sort of photography. Weird. At any rate, I wanted to try it for myself.

The first challenge was finding a good subject. Most of the examples I looked at were of urban landscapes around dusk with a sky full of puffy, billowing clouds turned all sorts of colors by the setting sun. I live in a rural area, so I don’t get to take photos of urban areas very often. My bedroom faces a direction that is better for dawn photography. The sunset is usually hidden behind a small mountain.

Before Daylight Saving Time ended, sunrise was coming pretty late, so I was able to get up in time to see it, but now it’s way too early. Sunset comes so early now that I’m often not home before it gets dark. Enough whining.

I noticed one evening when I was home early enough to see it, that the Eastern sky was showing some nice color. The moon was also peeking out from behind a cloud. At the time, I was still using the Canon PowerShot A95, so I didn’t have the option of automatic exposure bracketing.

I had tried bracketing manually before, but met with little success. I had problem with the camera moving when I changed the exposure setting. This would cause double-images in parts of the photo. Also, when I took extra care to keep the camera still, the clouds would be in very different positions in each shot.

That didn’t keep me from repeatedly trying. I managed to get a good shot on a this occasion. There was little-to-no wind and very little cloud movement, so I was able to take my time. I made sure camera and tripod were secure and changed the exposure settings as gently as possible.

Once I transferred the images from the camera, I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to merge the images. It’s basically idiot-proof. You selected HDR Merge from the menu, selected the files and waited a few seconds.

I am pretty pleased with the way the picture came out. The moon is exposed nicely, but you can still see the landscape. I was pretty surprised it all came out since it was so dark when I took the shot. This was also around the time when I was experimenting with putting borders around images and Photoshop scripts. I’m still not sure if I like the border. Here you go…

A few days later my new camera, Canon Digital Rebel XTi arrived. One of it’s many features is automatic exposure bracketing. It will take three pictures in quick succession at three different exposure levels. You can change the exposure steps from 1/3 to 2.

It took me a few days to find a good subject. I looked out the window over the weekend and saw the scene in the following picture. I put the camera in continuous shooting mode and stuck the camera out of the window. Because of the angle of the shot, I was unable to use a tripod. Somehow when I imported the pictures, they were lined up correctly. It may be a violation of the cardinal rule of landscape photography… I took it in the middle of the day, but it looks pretty cool to me. This is the result…

I plan on trying it more in the future. I just need to keep my eyes open for good opportunities.