The first time I saw an HDR photo, I was amazed. These vivid, almost surreal images just vibrate with color and light. But the quick research I did suggested you needed Photoshop to do High Dynamic Range photography, and I wasn’t willing to shell out $700 for software that I was going to use only as an HDR toy. Then, via BoingBoing, I found a link to O’Reilly’s Short Cuts on HDR photography. For less than $8, you can download a 57-page guide to producing HDR images, including suggestions on HDR software that are much cheaper than Photoshop. This is my first attempt, shot off our back deck at sunset. It’s a compilation of three images shot under-, correctly and over-exposed. If you want to see examples of HDR that are truly mind-blowing, check out the Flickr HDR group. I’m hoping to take something at some point that’s worth submitting there. But for a first attempt, I’m pretty pleased with this one.
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Surreal Sunset
HDR Sunset Originally uploaded by Suffering the Benz. The first time I saw an HDR photo, I was amazed. These vivid, almost surreal images just vibrate with color and light. But the quick research I did suggested you needed Photoshop to do High Dynamic Range photography, and I wasn’t willing to shell out $700 for […]
3 replies on “Surreal Sunset”
Ka and I were out running errands when this magnificent sunset started to form.
The farther the sun crept downward, the more those speckled clouds almost looked like a neon abstract.
And then we had a near total lunar eclipse this evening. Hmm … spooky …
very cool, bob! where have i been that i have never even heard of this technique before?! i look forward to seeing your further attempts. you’re off to a great start.
I think we were lucky enough to see this same view in person. I took several pictures, but all had a building or powerlines abstructing the shot. Your image makes it look like we were there again only HDR’d 🙂