Portsmouth Harbour HDR was my first foray into High Dynamic
Range photography. For those who don't know what this means I
shall give you a brief explanation...
In technical
terms HDR photography is a technique used to produce a greater
dynamic range of luminosity than standard photography
techniques can produce.
To simplify this it might be
helpful to explain the process used. First of all 3
photographs of this scene were shot - 1 underexposed, 1
overexposed and 1 in the middle. The overexposed image will
produce a blown out sky but will provide detail in the shadow
areas. The underexposed image will produce very dark shadows
but will keep details in the clouds, and the middle exposure
will produce mid-range luminosity values.
These 3 images
are then merged - I use specialist software called Photomatix
Pro for this. HDR processing is available within several photo
editing programs such as Photoshop and Affinity, however I
find that Photomatix allows more control if you need it, or
the option to use any one of several presets, and presets
created by other photographers can be downloaded online if you
aren't happy with the existing set.
The merging process
goes through a few steps to align the images, reduce noise and
also chromatic aberrations before you get to the tweaking
stage, whereby you can select the preset which most closely
matches the results you desire and then adjust various
settings such as white point, black point, saturation and
strength of HDR effect. This process is simply called Tone
Mapping.
The presets built in to Photomatix range from
smooth natural effects to grungy (which I despise). I tend to
go for either natural or painterly depending on the subject
matter and how I wish to present the final image. Portsmouth
Harbour HDR was shot on an overcast day so I chose natural
preset and adjusted the HDR effect strength ever so slightly
to bring out the detail in the clouds, but allowing me to
retain the natural look of the tower and the boat in the
foreground. |
