My First Attempt at HDR Photography

This is probably just about the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Original picture as shot with an increase in the exposure to bring out some detail in the shadows. As you can see, doing so immediately blows out the detail in the sky and the sky reflections in the water, and the trees in the background are pretty washed out. There's also still a lot of shadow area that is lacking detail.



Enter the concept of High Dynamic Range, which brings the world of photography a bit closer to what the eye actually sees (although this does have a touch of surrealism to my eye). Take multiple shots of the same scene, expose some to give detail in the shadows, some to give detail in the highlights, and merge them on your computer at home.



I'm pretty impressed. I think I'll keep playing around with this and see what happens.