HDR Digital Images, Sturgis Bike Trip 2009, First Day On The Road

Hey, I’m back from one heck of a ride. My riding buddy, Roger, and I were on the road for 15 days and it was quite an adventure this year. We experienced every kind of weather imaginal, including freezing rain, lightning storms, 50 to 60 mile an hour head and cross winds, a snow storm that closed Bear Tooth Pass,and a forest fire near Hat Creek in Northern California.

Our first day out was as we expected, fast and hard in 100 degree weather. We covered about 500 miles and didn’t stop much to take photographs. I did however spot an interesting old home near Ontario Oregon and took the time to take a quick photo. Here is what I came up with. I titled this one, “Priorities”. A guy has to do what a guy has to do. Ride like a bandit and to hell with the house maintainance!

 

The Image above was taken in aperture priority mode at f/11 at 250th of a second. After taking this exposure I decided to do a High Dynamic Range Image and took three exposures. The first exposure was my standard or normal exposure. I then took 2 other exposures, one at 2 stops over exposed to captue detail in the shadows and another at 2 stops underexposed to capture detail in the highlights. The contrast range was too extreme to get good detail throughout the entire image and I felt is was a good opportunity have some fun with HDR do to the unusual subject matter.

Using “Photomatix” which is one of the HDR softwares that I use, I combined the 3 exposures using Photomatix’s, exposure blending mode and created a file with good detail in all three ranges, highlight, shadow, and mid tone. The example below has not had any additional color, tone, or density corrections made but, I now have a very well exposed file to work with in my final image creation process using Photoshop.

Now for the fun part! Next I took the same 3 images that were used in Photomatix’s exposure blending mode and used the image detail enhancer to create the following image. Like it or love it, I think you will admit, It is interesting, and does get your attention. The interesting part of using the image detail enhancer is, you have a larger amount of creative control. You can create images with beautiful detail in both the highlight and shadows, or you can opt to create a funky effect like the image below using a variety of slider options.

 

After all, photography is suppose to be fun! HDR is just another way of having a good time as well as a means to getting some nice digital photographs that you might otherwise not take. HDR enables you to shoot in extreme or crappy lighting and still produce a high quality image. Oh, and by the way, you don’t need to shoot HDR in raw because HDR software is going to convert your files to jpegs or tiffs anyway.

Now if you don’t already have HDR software and would like to give it a try, there is a Free High Dynamic Range software which you can download and save yourself about $100. It isn’t quite as user friendly as Photomatix but what the heck, it is free. You can give it a try by downloading it here.

Stay tuned for more images, and a day by day account, of our 2009 Sturgis trip in the weeks to come.

Till next time, stay focused, Terry