Monday, April 28, 2008

Dogwood HDR



I wanted to try to create some HDR images the other day. Many of my students have been asking about HDR imaging and to be honest, I have not given it very much attention lately. I decided to go ahead and purchase Photomatix and give it a test run. It was raining and overcast all day yesterday, so I decided to seek out some flowering tree's and spring foliage down at my local park. I found a very healthy looking Dogwood and Redbud against some new spring green foliage and thought that this would make for an awesome shot. I set my camera to auto bracketing at 2/3 of stop for 5 images. After finding the right composition and waiting for a lull in the wind, I tripped the shutter 5 times recording my images for the HDR. I then shot a single exposure of the scene to examine the results and compare the 2 images. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with the HDR image. The HDR image really captures the full dynamic range and brought out all the information in the darker woods. WOW ! I will definitely be adding this to my bag of tools as well as offering up instruction on HDR imaging on my photography workshops and tours.


Here are the 2 images. What do you think ?
Dogwood and Redbud - HDR

Dogwood and Redbud- single exposure

2 comments:

John Barclay said...

I've been using Photomatix for awhile now and love it as a creative tool. Nice job here. I've gotta tell ya, your work is inspiring and the blog excellent! Great stuff Joe!

Joseph Rossbach said...

John,

Thanks man for the kind words. I am loving HDR right now and plan on making alot of new photos with this tremendous software. I just ran over to your site, man you have got some awesome images man. Maybe we will run into each other in the field. Keep in touch and keep up the great work.
Joe