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This is the first article in a series of BinaryCafe.com articles and tutorials focused on High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography.

Outside of Chicago (the windy city), we’ve had some violent thunderstorms lately. Strong winds have caused our pear tree to lose much of its fruit. The good news is that the neighborhood rabbits are happy…and a bit plumper.

Pear Tree HDR Comparison – BinaryCafe.com (HDR image on right)

After enjoying my own (pear-free) dinner tonight, I took a stroll around my yard. As I approached our pear tree, I saw rich warm sunlight dancing off the remaining pears.  I thought it would make a good photo, so I grabbed my trusty HX200V from inside the house and starting snapping pictures.

The photos were disappointing. They just didn’t capture the essence of what I was seeing with my eyes.

As a photographer, you will inevitably run into situations when you aren’t able to capture a moment “the way you see it”. This is especially true outdoors, when the sun is shining brightly on some of the objects that are in frame but other objects remain buried in the shadows. At the time of composition, you can modify the camera’s settings to make adjustments. Unfortunately, those adjustments tend to overexpose the brightest spots–or, if you make adjustments in the other direction–you’ll end up with sections of dark, shadowy blotches that lack detail.

Although your camera is an amazing tool, it is limited. Its lens, sensor and processor are only able to capture a limited range of contrast information. You can use digital imaging software to modify your images, in post-production; however, each single image contains a limited range of information about the luminance (i.e., contrast or shades of gray). This luminance information is critically important to the way we see. You can use image-editing software on your computer to modify your digital images, but the results are limited to the detail captured in that file. The results are greatly affected by the ratio between the darkest spots and the brightest spots. Bright spots kill shadows when they’re too bright and shadows kill bright spots when they’re too dark.

So… if there’s a limitation with the amount of information stored in a single file, why not use multiple files? If you could take several individual photographs and use the best parts of each one, to create a single image, then you’d overcome the physical limitations of a single image and achieve a higher dynamic range.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is the process of manipulating a series of different images, each with unique exposure values, into a single image that yields a higher ratio between the darkest and lightest spots. That’s my definition and I’m sticking to it.

The coolest thing about High Dynamic Range is that it looks “different”. When it’s done right, it looks cool… and that’s a bit subjective. I’ve seen HDR photographs that made me cringe, only to hear somebody else ooh and aah about how amazing they looked. That’s art, baby. I’ve also seen HDR photographs that elicit a strong emotional response similar to the feeling I’ve always gotten when I see the warm glow of Christmas lights on an evergreen, or a crackling fire casting an amber glow. I love good HDR when I see it.

When I was taking pictures of the pears this evening, I lost most of the detail at the bottom of the pears, in the shadows. The solution was an easy one: I switched my HX200V to autobracket mode and changed the exposure value range to +/-1 EV. Check out the tips and tricks video on how to use autobracketing. After making this change, the camera took 3 pictures each time I clicked the shutter button, instead of one. Each image had a different exposure value. When I loaded the files on my computer, I used HDR software to composite the three images into a single image, which I adjusted to my satisfaction. Manipulating the images in the HDR software only took a minute or two. The most important part of the process was capturing multiple images with different exposure values, when I was shooting. On a tripod. Tripods are important because you don’t want movement between the frames. We’ll talk more about that in future content.

In my opinion, the best HDR images are the ones where I don’t immediately think, “Holy WOW–that’s an HDR image!” The bad ones are usually highly over-saturated/over-processed. Again, it’s subjective. Have fun. It’s your image!

HDR photography is popular, so it makes sense that many new digital cameras now include HDR functions where all of the processing takes place automatically by software in the camera. While this is convenient, I think it is a bit flawed because the best part about HDR photography is that the photographer drives the artistic direction of the finished product by customizing its appearance in HDR software to create surreal images, monochromatic images, images that glow… the sky’s the limit. In HDR software, you can modify various parameters to achieve the look you want. Today, the HDR function on most cameras is fairly limited. This will probably improve, over time. In order the get the best quality HDR images, you need to put some HDR tools into your toolkit. I’m looking forward to recording some software tutorials for you, which will be a fun way to showcase some of these tools!

If you liked this article and look forward to more content on this topic, please take a moment to comment or ‘like’.

Michael Wilcox is the founder of BinaryCafe.com. You can follow him on Twitter, or find BinaryCafe on Facebook.

Related Topics:

BinaryCafe – High Dynamic Range – Part 1 – Introduction to HDR Photography