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HDR Photography Introduction
Update 11/27/2009 – With my continuing interest in HDR Photography, I’ve decided to begin my own personal blog detailing everything I can about HDR. It’s still a work in progress, but feel free to drop by and take a look around.
Every now and then I stumble across some type of new technology that simply blows my mind. About 10 months ago, Joel McDonald, a friend of mine who I met through StomperNet, sent out a tweet regarding a photo he saw online that a real estate agent had posted to help advertise the sale of a house. Since I’m also a Real Estate Agent, my curiosity was sparked, and I took a look at the photo. My initial thought was something like – “Holy Freaking Crap“.
This image is from a cruise that I took in June, 2009
I wasn’t sure what it was about this photo that I had viewed, but it looked incredible. It was in perfect focus, had an incredible blend of rich colors, and quite simply, it just had a certain WOW factor to it that I couldn’t figure out. What was it about this photo that made it look so amazing? I later learned that the agent had used a technique known as HDR. No, it doesn’t stand for High Definition Resolution, which is what I initially thought. It stands for High Dynamic Range.
Because I don’t want to turn this post into an HDR tutorial, I’ll just summarize what HDR is and how it will positively change the way you take photos and bring fun back into your life.
The “normal” way of taking a photograph is to take a single exposure that hopefully catches a wide range of the various levels of light within the composition. Since doing so is usually impossible with a single exposure, the method of HDR comes into play. By taking 3-5 pictures of the same scene under different exposures, you can now import those exposures into your computer and use various types of HDR software to blend them all into a single shot. You then end up with a photo that shows the entire range of light, which simply looks incredible.
I captured this image in downtown Boston on July 4, 2009
After spending quite a bit of time online viewing examples of HDR photography that others had published, I stumbled across one site in particular that posted the best high dynamic range photos I had ever seen. The site was a travel diary of Trey Ratcliff, which featured HDR photography of places Trey had traveled to all over the world. Every day, Trey would post a new photo, which I’d anxiously await every evening. It was an inspiration to see the beauty of his work and I quickly learned that hdr photography was something that I had to learn how to do.
Fortunately for me, Trey put together a free hdr tutorial on his site, which detailed the steps involved with how he processes his photos. I watched his tutorial several times, and then later purchased the hdr software that he uses and recommends, which is Photomatix Pro. (Trey has an excellent Photomatix review on his website.) Over the course of the next 5-6 months, I continued to practice my skills of trying to perfect hdr photography. As my images continued to get better, I felt that I needed to give thanks to Trey, since it was his website and his hdr tutorial that had inspired me to take on a new hobby that brought fun back into my life outside of the office.
This is the casino on the Queen Mary 2, which I captured during a cruise my wife and I took in July, 2009.
Since I know quite a bit about seo (search engine optimization), I contacted Trey via email to see if I could “repay” his generosity by providing him with an hour of my consulting time at no charge. He responded that he was interested in my seo consulting and several days later we had a 1-2 hour phone call. In less than one week later, Trey had applied almost everything I had taught him to his website, and was already seeing the positive results it was making.
Scott Kublin & Trey Ratcliff at Olympic Park in Atlanta
When I realized that Trey immediately put into action what I was teaching him about seo, I knew that he would love to attend a StomperNet Live event, which is a 3-day seminar that takes place several times each year in Atlanta. StomperNet focuses on search engine optimization and internet marketing and I knew this would be something Trey would love to learn more about. So, I invited him to attend and he took me up on the offer.
This StomperNet Live event was at the beginning of August, 2009. I picked up Trey on a Friday evening at the airport and drove him to his hotel. The next day, we attended some of the StomperNet sessions and got to know each other a little bit better. But later that afternoon, we decided to skip out on some of the sessions and instead head to Olympic Park to take some photos.
If you’re new to HDR, you probably don’t realize what type of an opportunity I had by being able to shadow Trey while he’s taking pictures. In the online world, Trey is known as one of the leading experts on HDR imaging and has a huge following of fans, who just like myself, are being inspired daily by the photos that Trey posts on his website. These fans would have killed to be in my shoes that afternoon. Fortunately for them, I decided to bring my $80 video camera with me and filmed some of what took place, hence the video that is featured within this post.
If you’re like I used to be, and can’t seem to get photos that you take to have that WOW factor, I highly recommend you learn more about the world of HDR photography. Trust me, it’s easy to learn and you’ll look forward to time away from your office so that you can go out and explore and capture images of this beautiful world we all live in.
This is a great behind-the-scenes video of Trey… I also highly recommend checking out Trey’s HDR tutorial – I’ve used a few of his techniques for the creation of my HDR photos, which you may see here. Thanks for making this video and posting it!
`An Introduction to HDR Photography` is great page, that takes away in to world tour, mystic places, great temples and many serene place, really enjoyable and had a real experience of those spots. Great Trey Ratcliff, seems to be young fellow with rich experience and thanks a ton to Scott Kublin who provided info. bat. him..nice time
Thanks for sharing this video and taking your time to put it together for everyone! You both deserve a pat on the back for shedding light on HDR.
Trey’s use of masking in the final image to hide that nasty HDR “ring” that is so common with the basic HDR attempts makes all the difference. Unfortunately, it requires some PS skills and a desire to spend some time doing “post production” to perfect that image. Too bad they don’t make a software package that does all that for the photog…
Hi Everyone,
You’re more than welcome for the video I put together. I know that Trey has a huge following of fans interested in HDR and I knew you’d like the opportunity to see him setting up for various shots.
great video. nice to see trey in action with hdr. not sure what he has in the flash hot shoe. thanks for sharing.
I love watching a good photographer in action. I’m just learning and it really helps those of us who can’t travel to the outings and seminars in other places. I never hear of anyone coming to San Antonio, but would attend if there was something. Thanks for the video.
Great article and video. I too am a huge Trey fan… thanks for making the video!
thanks for the video- i just started with real photography a couple of months ago and found Treys website- i’m hooked and don’t have a clue on what i’m doing but having a blast learning.
I was looking at trey’s newest photo on flickr and came across your video.
Great stuff, very good to see the formulative stages at which Trey sets up his shots. I was specially intrigued with the talk about the green leaf’s and going +-2 stops HDR to get proper exposure.
very interesting.
for my own part I have not done any HDR in about 8 months now and I now find myself wondering why not.
the HDR effect the way trey does it really makes well balanced and Beautiful Images–I’m still a work in progress, hope to get there someday.
regards to you Scotty, great site
Evan Spellman
I like your HDR Artistic work on your beautiful images.
I wonder how can I buy this software and the tutorial video?
Thanks